Google Grows, Privacy Shrinks

Google got into the phone business this week and decided to start using your web habits to target ads to you.

Here's a USA Today article on Google Voice and here's New York Times article on the "interest based" advertising plan by Google.

Google will now give you a local phone number that will receive calls to your office, home and cell phones and ring all of them. If you don't answer any of them, it will record a voicemail from your caller, transcribe it into print and send it to you via Gmail. Making a call is a bit more clunky. You have to go to the service's website, type in the number you want to call and choose which of your phones you want to make the call from. Google then calls that phone and places the call for you. It's free for domestic calls and a couple of cents a minute for international calls. Google already searches your Gmail. I suppose it will search your transcribed voicemail too.

Google also really cares about your online shopping experience. It has started tracking where you surf and keeping records of the categories of surfing you do. It then uses that information to place ads it thinks you want to see on sites you then visit. Interestingly, Microsoft and Yahoo already do this, which I didn't know. You get the new "service" unless you opt out. There's a link in the NYT article that takes you to Google's Ad Preference Manager to do it.

While I'm on the subject of privacy or its lack, did you know there are sites that track you and either give or sell information about you? Pipl.com, CVGadget.com and Spokeo.com are a few. Pipl lets you block your info. Here's the link to a CNet.com article about them.

I did a post about trading convenience for privacy a week or so ago. I was right about the need for constant vigilance.