Chief Prognosticator

Google’s Advertising in Trouble?

Here’s a great post I wrote a few months ago….

Come on, you may ask, how can Google come to an end? Well here’s a scenario which might make dry up Google’s revenues and send the stock crashing back to Earth. There is a movement underway to create a National Do Not Track list. Similar to the National Do Not Call list which prevents telemarketers from calling your home phone, this list would prevent Internet Service Providers and the sites which are accessed through them to place Cookies on their users machines or track them in any other sort of way. What would this do to Google’s ability to place targeted ads in search results and AdSense page views? Well on the surface it seems that Google would be safe since it serves ads based on search queries. This way Google doesn’t need to place any Cookies because the “targeted term” is physically submitted by the web visitor. You type in “Chinese Restaurants Atlanta” and Google knows to show ads for those companies who paid for those search terms. But the trouble comes in when we look deeper. Nobody knows exactly how much data Google tracks of it’s users over time. It has been made public in the past that Google compiles search data over time and perhaps this involves examining particular IP addresses or users. If the National Do Not Track list comes into existence, then Google will be severely limited to mine this valuable advertising data. In return Google’s entire advertising model could be compromised, send earnings way down and opening themselves up for class action lawsuits from anyone still tracked. So could it be the end of Google? Only time will tell but at least you stock holder have been warned.