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fantOpEd #1 – fantomaster’s personal take on search engines, data gobblers and Big Brother Award candidates

(rt) Google’s recently introduced AutoLinks feature, while provoking denouncements across the board, makes eminent sense when you consider the rationale behind their very corporate existence.

While I’m not sure that all users (or even a majority) will see the benefits of being able to customize their own web surfing experience, I’m fairly certain that bundling (read: masking) such features with otherwise useful tools (such as the Google toolbar) by default will more or less enforce the practice reducing “user choice ” on a broad scale to a merely academic concept.

Google being the current search market top dog, it’s quite obvious that the countless comparisons to Microsoft that have been voiced over the years aren’t very much off the mark at all.

However, regarding monetization of features like AutoLinks, I expect this to be less about Google hijacking web publishers’ business by pointing users to their own affiliate links or something. They might try this stunt, but it would probably mean the end of their web wide acceptance. Google may be a lot of things, but they’ve never been dumb in PR matters.

Actually, this AutoLinks fiasco seems to be the first time they appear to be heading in the wrong direction on this score, so the jury’s still very much out on whether they will actually persevere in this matter and simply endure the flak they’re getting. But even if they don’t, they’re sure to come up with something less blunt but just as effective as a monetization tool at some later point.

Consider: Google presents this as being “all for the user, no commercial interests involved etc.”. This, while technically perhaps correct (or a “white lie” at best), successfully obfuscates the plain fact that they have been a data mining company from the very start. Their search engine is merely the conduit for data streams, which is where the real money lies. They might still go against this “we’re the purveyors of surfers’ happiness ” principle and try to
hijack web publishers’ business, but that would probably provoke a PR disaster unheard of before in the history of the Net. We should rather assume that they’re too smart for that.

Most people, even in SEO / SEM, don’t seem to be entirely clear about what data mining actually is about. A lot of fuzzy concepts abound, but only a few people seem to realize the commercial potential inherent in owning the world’s largest database of trackable and verifiable user behavior.

Take AdWords: a great revenue stream for Google, true – but offhand I’d estimate that the overall value of the data generated from that venture alone probably beats the AdWords revenues by factor 6 or more if properly processed, analyzed, calibrated and marketed.

Search being the prime common denominator of all WWW activity, it’s the most powerful source of (marketable) information re users’ online behavior, shifting interests, market trends and purchasing decisions extant.

And they’re doing it already: just look at how marketers are paying through their noses for PPC and AdWords, based on what are, after all, still fairly primitive, generic keyword stats offered by the search engines!

But this is mere peanuts compared to what they can make in addition by hawking verifiable market analysis reports, economic prognoses, etc. Such as the data they’re collecting so intrusively via the ubiquitous Google toolbar. (See our article .)

Ever had a look at what price prime market studies by Forrester Research are sold for? Size this down to cater to smaller businesses on a global scale, and what you will get is probably a business model just as lucrative (if not more so) as the weapons industry and organized crime combined …

So while the majority of SEO /SEM agents seemed fairly surprised to learn of → Google’s acquisition of bespoke web analytics software company Urchin, they really shouldn’t have been – just one further logical step in a very long trail.

Of course, Google aren’t the only people who’ve recognized the huge stakes at hand – both Yahoo! and Microsoft/MSN have a long history of grabbing and analyzing data streams to further monetization. So yes, we will probably see a lot more happening on those lines in the foreseeable future.

In fact, much of this is here already, albeit in a somewhat hushed manner. Take Amazon, not the classical search engine, one would normally assume. A less biased scrutiny will quickly reveal the opposite: Amazon is indeed very much into search (and searchers’ data) indeed and has been doing it for years.

Such as collecting detailed information about what its customers browse for without buying, actually buy, recommend to others and even resell on their platform (and at what price).

Such as maintaining their proprietary search engine → A9 that remembers everything users ever searched for.

Such as funding a privately held Seattle based company called → The Robot Co-op for building a community of many constituencies consisting of members with a common interest such as traveling to Brazil, learning the piano, adopting a baby, etc. on their web site → 43 Things, complete with a free blogging platform for registered users.

This is obviously as yet an experiment in carving an opening into social networking with its immense potential of trend scouting and consumer tracking.

Finally, let’s not forget their subsidiary navigation tracking (toolbar and all) → Alexa whose vast database of web user behavior information is available on the Amazon web services platform.

All of which constitute prime sources of consumer behavior worth millions if not billions of dollars if analyzed and converted into efficient sales strategies properly. Little wonder then that privacy advocacy groups have begun targeting Amazon as the next incarnation of Orwellian evil. So maybe they will qualify for a Big Brother Award soon …

(For a good, well-informed summary of Amazon’s historical and current data mining activities, see this recent AP Business article by Allison Linn, “Amazon.com knows, predicts shopping habits” in →  “Amazon.com knows, predicts shopping habits”.)

Will ordinary people care in any big way? Probably not. Look at privacy: excepting a smallish elite, nobody would give a damn about it until spam, DOS trojans, spyware, phishing and phraming came along on a large scale – it was only when it hit people right in their wallets that they began to worry about it. There’s no rational reason to expect this to be different.

[Parts of this article were first published on → ThreadWatch forums.]

[Update 2005-05-05]
No, I’m not psychic – though one might be excused for thinking so, seeing the recent developments. Here’s a fresh selection of articles (in chronological order) covering the issues involved and bearing out our take in this op-ed:

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