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The world’s most dominant internet search engine, Google.com, announced last week that it was going to start targeting advertising to users based on the sites they visit. This type of focused marketing is called behavioral advertising. Basically if you use Google to search for children’s clothes, future Google searches may have ads tilted towards children’s items. Google can do this by tracking your every keyword and click – a policy that has privacy advocates up in arms. The fear is that user data could be made available to outside marketing companies and even government agencies like law enforcement. One news report said that “Google privacy officials, as recently as early 2008, said they had no plans to engage in behavioral advertising,” and that “behavioral advertising doesn’t work.” Google is often touted as as example of a responsible corporation, and has been recognized as one of the best companies to work for. The company has become so ubiquitous on the internet that to Google is now an acceptable “verb.”

GUEST: Micah White, Contributing Editor to Adbusters Magazine

Read Micah White’s blog, where you can learn how to subvert Google’s Adsense program here: http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/blackspot_blog/unclick_google.html