Google Patents Detecting, Tracking, Targeting Kids

theodp writes "A newly-issued Google patent for Rendering Advertisements With Documents Having One or More Topics Using User Topic Interest describes how to detect the presence of children by 'using evidence of sophistication determined using user actions' and tracking their behavior using the Google Toolbar and other methods to deliver targeted ads. Which is interesting, since the Google Terms of Service supposedly prohibit the use of Services by anyone 'not of legal age.' The inventor is Google Principal Scientist Krishna Bharat, who is a co-inventor of another pending Google patent for inferring searchers' ethnicity, reading level, age, sex and income (and storing it all)." Ok I'll be the first to admit that this is greek to me. Someone smart figure this out and post a comment translating patentese into english.

Ads by Google...

[LostCluster (625375)]

We already know Google is at its core an ad delivery company. At least, that's the main revenue source that powers the feel-good things like search. And what makes ads work is targeting. No use selling things that the user isn't interested in. And for that matter, no use selling things that only adults would want to kids. So, the news here is that Google's got a patent on what they've been trying to do in this space all along.

Re:Ads by Google...

[zappepcs (820751)]

I agree with you. They are making their products more valuable to advertisers by targeting better than anyone else, and not in an obtrusive way, but a smart way.

Another thing that I find interesting: if Google is truly a do no evil company, they can use these patents to stop others from using them for bad things. I hope that is the case.

Re:

[denton420 (1235028)]

I dont really mind if google collects detailed information about my every action.

They are such a great company!

Holier-than-thou ignorant nonsense

[TheMeuge (645043)]

"do you actually realize you are just part of a modern mega-Advertising Machine?"

So fucking what? Is it better to be a part of a modern mega-Car-making Machine?.. or a modern mega-Paper-pushing Machine?

At its utmost core, advertising is doing a very important job - connecting people who would like to buy something, with the sellers who are offering something for sale. Like it or not, but advertising, in whatever form, is an integral part of a market economy. The fact that advertising is obtrusive and annoying, is not any more an inherent property of advertising, than killing innocent people is an inherent property of a sword (I was going to say "gun", but realized where I was).

If anything, you should be PRAISING Google for furthering the idea that advertising can be profitable WITHOUT being intrusive, and disruptive. As opposed to spamming you with images or sounds hawking products you're not interested in, Google politely shows you products that their software thinks you might be interested in (to the best of their ability to determine this).

Only communist-pipe-dream hippie would think something wrong of such an approach, or would think it shameful to work at such a company. Ultimately, everything is relative, and I'd rather have Google than many of its competitors.

Re:

[Dachannien (617929)]

Is it better to be a part of a modern mega-Car-making Machine?.. or a modern mega-Paper-pushing Machine?

While advertising does help to connect sellers with buyers, it does so in a skewed way that can decrease the information available to one side (the buyer, when the seller is doing the advertising). A lot of advertising is done in a way that unfairly represents the product or service in a positive light, in some cases in a rather subtle manner (hot chicks in beer ads, for instance).

So, considering that a large portion of advertising is intended to deceive people, yes, I would say it is better to be part of

You always have to go one step too far

[xant (99438)]

At its utmost core, advertising is doing a very important job - connecting people who would like to buy something, with the sellers who are offering something for sale. Like it or not, but advertising, in whatever form, is an integral part of a market economy. The fact that advertising is obtrusive and annoying, is not any more an inherent property of advertising, than killing innocent people is an inherent property of a sword (I was going to say "gun", but realized where I was).

Yes...

If anything, you should be PRAISING Google for furthering the idea that advertising can be profitable WITHOUT being intrusive, and disruptive. As opposed to spamming you with images or sounds hawking products you're not interested in, Google politely shows you products that their software thinks you might be interested in (to the best of their ability to determine this).

Yes...

Only communist-pipe-dream hippie would think something wrong of such an approach, or would think it shameful to work at such a company. Ultimately, everything is relative, and I'd rather have Google than many of its competitors.

Wait, what? Can't you just make your argument without saying stupid shit like this? I was nodding along until you went all ad hominem to make this terrible point. There are very good reasons not to want Google to do this, and even a rootin' tootin' gun-toting libertarian swashbuckler should be able to see what they are. Do we constantly have to advance the collection of our private reading habits into massive online databases? Do we constantly have to push the boundaries of what people a

False assumption

[TheMeuge (645043)]

I hope you're being sarcastic, because if you're not, you're deeply deluded.

The statements you made seem to be operating on an assumption that people are ENTITLED to automatically receive profits for whatever work they choose to do. Yet I couldn't imagine a judgment that is more ridiculous than that. Why is it that you claim that people are "supposed to make a living offering products and services like online email, apps, mapping, etc?"

Re:Ads by Google...

[DrEldarion (114072)]

Of course, you fail to mention all the people and businesses that benefit hugely from the free/cheap Google services. The benefit to society is far greater than the detriment to other companies.

Do you think that FOSS is bad because it's free and taking sales away from commercial software?

Re:

[DrEldarion (114072)]

So don't install it. As with Alexa, they make it no secret that they're collecting information through the toolbar. If you don't like those terms, then why use it?

Re:

[amRadioHed (463061)]

it's a form of Corporate Big Brother is watching us

A Big Brother that you can uninstall is no Big Brother.

Reading a website doesn't form a contract anyway

[drinkypoo (153816)]

Very odd text from the ToS:

"2.3 You may not use the Services and may not accept the Terms if (a) you are not of legal age to form a binding contract with Google, or (b) you are a person barred from receiving the Services under the laws of the United States or other countries including the country in which you are resident or from which you use the Services."

Uh, visiting a website DEFINITELY doesn't constitute forming a binding contract. My (completely unprofessional) understanding is that if I can use the services without having to verify my identity, then I probably haven't formed any contract, and if I'm not forced to even be aware that there IS a "contract" then I certainly haven't agreed to anything.

Am I right? Or have we entered some parallel dimension in which simply looking at a piece of content makes you bound by a contract? I'm going to sneak into museums and install my own paintings with arduous terms of viewing.

Re:

[Cap'N Crapper (833990)]

It's worded that way to say "you can't use our crap if you aren't an adult" in legalese.

Re:

[pionzypher (886253)]

Parent pretty much has it. This technology would allow google to make some sort of determination whether the user in question was not an adult and thus either keep their targeted ads clean, or bump the user off the service pending some other form of age verification. I'd assume they'd simply screen the ads for children browsing; rather than piss off the huge number of adults who have child-like random click syndrome by taking away their email. Looking at it from that angle, now google can sort of claim t

Re:Reading a website doesn't form a contract anywa

[DrEldarion (114072)]

Well, 1) it's probably legally required to have something like that in there, and 2) it's probably in there not for something like web search, but for things that you have to sign up for (GMail, Base, etc).

Re:Reading a website doesn't form a contract anywa

[blair1q (305137)]

It doesn't say you're forming a contract. You can't form a contract where one of the parties gets nothing in return anyway (though you could argue that because your clicks and eyeball time are of value to google, which they clearly are, that compensates google for the content and services).

It says Google isn't responsible for anything you do and you're not bound to the terms of the TOS if in your jurisdiction you're not old enough to be presumed to understand something that has rules that may not be explic

Re:Reading a website doesn't form a contract anywa

[TheFlamingoKing (603674)]

You can't form a contract where one of the parties gets nothing in return anyway

Please don't let my wife know about this.

Re:Reading a website doesn't form a contract anywa

[Mjec (666932)]

Uh, visiting a website DEFINITELY doesn't constitute forming a binding contract. My (completely unprofessional) understanding is that if I can use the services without having to verify my identity, then I probably haven't formed any contract, and if I'm not forced to even be aware that there IS a "contract" then I certainly haven't agreed to anything.

Merely looking at something does not bind you, generally speaking, but you could at least in theory be bound by looking (NDA anyone?) and you almost certainly do have a contract with Google.

The whole point about a contract is that a good or service is offered and you accept that offer with "consideration" (giving up some property, doing something or refraining from doing something) being exchange for that. In this case the service is obvious and you accept a contract when you click "Search Google" or even "I'm Feeling Lucky". Your consideration is agreeing to their Terms of Service (which is mostly about refraining from doing something).

As to being aware that the contract is being made, you are presumed to know that you are entering into a relationship with your service provider (Google). This makes quite a bit of sense really. If you pay a guy to clean your car and he doesn't, he's might be guilty of a crime but that won't give you your money back. You need to sue him because you had an understanding and he didn't hold up his end of the bargain. That's a contract and it doesn't matter if you don't know his name.

It is generally considered that if your attention is brought to the existence of terms (for example by a link to "Terms of Service", or by text on a bus ticket saying "Issued subject to terms and conditions") then your use of the service indicates your acceptance of those terms. This is particularly true where you use the service repeatedly - you have ample opportunity to discover and question those terms but you keep coming back. So you must be OK with them.

NB: IANAL but I am a law student, albeit from Australia.

Re:Reading a website doesn't form a contract anywa

[JohnSearle (923936)]

...and if I'm not forced to even be aware that there IS a "contract" then I certainly haven't agreed to anything.

This reminds me...

I used to work for Sprint as a crappy CSR (Customer Service Representative) back when they forced you into contracts for making any sort of changes to your account (esp. price plan changes), and I can say that customers were not always (or even commonly) aware as to their entering a binding legal agreement. There were a lot of times when a customer would call up to cancel, and you state that they'll have an ETF (Early Termination Fee) due to a previous price plan change; they were shocked and denied that they were told anything, and usually went on to claim that they are legally entitled to be warned of this.

Even though it was blatantly obvious that our staff, not to mention the under-trained overseas non-English speaking staff, were not informing the customers of this fact, we were informed that we had to tell the customer that their claims were meaningless. We had no records of our staff NOT informing them that a contractual obligation came with the account changes, so we can only assume that they were told. A verbal contract is a binding contract, and the website has the full details of the contract extensions, if they bothered to go search. So basically we were told to tell them, "too fucking bad!"

Nowhere in my CSR training did they state that we had to inform the customer of contract extensions, and the retention rate of employees was terrible... so one can only assume that very few people in the building were doing their jobs even remotely correct. (These are all obvious reasons for the exodus from Sprint by their customers)

How does all this relate to the OP? It highlights the casual disregard by big business of their legal obligations. If there is no record that you were not informed that a contract was required, then the business can only assume that you were under one.

- John

Re:

[Adambomb (118938)]

I don't know john, i've worked in several industries at this point and i can easily state that the standard service industries like cable and telecom are leaps and bounds beyond in terms of disregard of their legal obligations. For google, their terms of service have no direct relation to their income. No activation charges, no ETFs/LTCCs, no "HEY WANT A FREE PHONE?! SIGN HERE!".

You're definitely not wrong about the standard services industries though. In canada, ALL the major telecom companies operate this

Re:

[Adambomb (118938)]

Ahh mistook who the OP was the way threads were nesting at first. My Bad =D

The thing i always wonder is how well such things would hold up in court in the EULAs and whether they ever had. We had in the TOS of the company i worked for that they actually werent liable for the actions or mistakes of their customer service reps. I would LOVE to see that in court.

I've never once been able to find a case of someone contesting these things though, beyond the SAF/911 class action here in canada and the current expr

Re:

[Actually, I do RTFA (1058596)]

We had no records of our staff NOT informing them that a contractual obligation came with the account changes, so we can only assume that they were told.

Fortunately Sprint is not the final arbiter of the facts, a jury is. And fortunately, in the case a civil action, those training methods, retention rate, and , I assume, even polling employees would all be admissible (the person would have to prove it was more likely than not he was not warned.)

IANAL, so maybe it is not that easy. But I think most time

Re:

[drinkypoo (153816)]

Disclaimer: IANAL I think that the contract is not accepted by visiting google, but by using their search you agree to the terms and services; (ie. their services.)

No, it says I understand and agree that Google will behave that way. But it says nothing about what happens in court.

The "understand" bit is probably intended to make that happen. But as an English speaker (in other words, not a lawyer) what that says to me is that I comprehend that Google thinks we have a contract. And, I agree that Google will behave that way. But I do not agree that Google and I have a contract. Whether that interpretation would hold up in court or not I don't know, I suspect that giv

Re:

[gomiam (587421)]

(B) by actually using the Services. In this case, you understand and agree that Google will treat your use of the Services as acceptance of the Terms from that point onwards.

Which makes no sense whatsoever, anyway: you need to read the ToS to know that just using the service is considered by Google an acceptance of the ToS.

Uhoh

[the children (1000266)]

Think of us!!!!!

What's so interesting about it?

[ScrewMaster (602015)]

Which is interesting, since the Google Terms of Service supposedly prohibit the use of Services by anyone 'not of legal age.'

That's not remotely interesting. This is just a patent, one of many that companies like Google hold, for a variety of reasons. Now, if Google implements this capability, especially in violation of their own Terms of Service ... that would be interesting. But for now it's just a curiosity.

Re:

[catwh0re (540371)]

I was thinking this is more of a defensive patent for google. A policy against targetting children (perhaps by enforcing this patent) is a good way to stave off government internet regulation

Re:

[ScrewMaster (602015)]

Quite possibly. Targeting kids would do nothing to enhance Google's image. Matter of fact, in our current political climate it would stupid for any company to do that.

Hmmm

[Thyamine (531612)]

So how soon after this will we see a lawsuit from an adult that was detected as a child, and now is seeking damages for mental anguish or low self esteem or whatever.

Stupid software patents leading to stupid lawsuits. Gotta love our patent and legal system.

Re:

[Original Replica (908688)]

As long as the computer doesn't think they are a cat. [bitboost.com] I wonder if PawSense would count as prior art in using typing patterns in determining the user?

Extremely misleading headline.

[DrEldarion (114072)]

Perhaps I'm wrong, but after scanning this, it seems ridiculous and inflammatory that this is posted as "GOOGLE IS TRACKING OUR KIDS!!!". Doing a couple searches, I didn't see anything on "age", and the only thing that "child" brought up was:

Further, a given topic might be divided based on degrees of expertise or sophistication. For example, a user interested in the topic "volcano" could be interested in a basic introduction to volcanoes (a novice), a technical understanding of volcanoes (an expert), or be interested in a tourism information regarding volcanoes (some sophistication). Different sets of one or more ads can be associated with the different levels of user expertise in a give topic. Using evidence of sophistication determined using user actions for example, ads targeted for novices, average sophistication, or experts (e.g., children, tourists, scientists) may be served and rendered.

Oh yeah, very evil.

Re:

[theodp (442580)]

From the pending patent:

[0068] The UPI attributes 420 may include information concerning user background and interests such as, for example, geographic information, age or age group, topics of interest, reading level, income and other demographics suited for targeting advertisements.

Re:

[kenh (9056)]

Exactly - I can walk down the street and identify children as a distinct group from adults, and tailor my interactions (or lack thereof) with them based on that assessment. Google thinks they have come up with a way to infer that same information and tailor their responses accordingly. How Evil .

Re:

[kesuki (321456)]

so now, everyone who's a 'novice' is a child now? does that mean if i google basic wiki articles i'll be getting hasbro ads?

there are a lot of things i have an above average understanding of, but there is no shortage of subjects in which I'm still at a novice level of understanding. google, and wikipedia are the first tools i turn to to find information when I'm lacking... does that mean they'll be skewing ads to think I'm a child?

Prior Art!

[st0rmshad0w (412661)]

Full Metal Jacket:

"easy, ya just don't lead 'em as much!"

this seems like an easy thing to do:

[romanval (556418)]

#1 Find the average tagged keyword of a searched resulted and clicked-thru website

#2 gather enough of these searches and you'll have a composite of the searcher's general interests

#3 cross references their general interest with the average gender, socieconomic, racial, and/or

#4.. Patent!!!

#5... Profit???

So if you want to screw up that system, a person should just search and click thru something completely random, like businessman searching pokeman websites, a musician searching physics research, or a slashdotter searching for ED pills :)

The inverse could be used by law enforcement

[Teun (17872)]

I could imagine the inverse results of this system being used to find grown-ups preying on kids.
Or even build in to certain sites to prevent this from happening.

Prior art : Paedophilles

[Oktober Sunset (838224)]

They've been detecting, tracking and targeting kids for years.


Bad taste? Nah, you guys love it as much as you love dead baby jokes.

Damn kids...

[MikeRT (947531)]

GET OFF MY HOMEPAGE!!!

amazing

[Deanalator (806515)]

Having spent many of my younger years chasing down children while working at an after school program, I can honestly say that if google has figured out an algorithm for detecting, tracking, and targeting kids they deserve a freaking fields medal.

Once more, in English

[Minwee (522556)]

Ok I'll be the first to admit that this is greek to me. Someone smart figure this out and post a comment translating patentese into english.

Okay. "Google is working on ways to read your mind."

It's part of their plan for world domination, but in an evil-free way.

Re:

[ScrewMaster (602015)]

"What are we going to do today, Brin?

"Same thing we always do, Larry ... try and take over the world!"

not just children

[penguinbroker (1000903)]

ftfp: "Different sets of one or more ads can be associated with the different levels of user expertise in a give topic. Using evidence of sophistication determined using user actions for example, ads targeted for novices, average sophistication, or experts (e.g., children, tourists, scientists) may be served and rendered."

This is simply an extension of what google already does at the page level. Instead of settling for targeting ads based on the contents of the page, google would like to tailor ads based on what the user is specifically looking at on a page. The above quote denotes the fact that they are likely to find correlations among certain demographic and age groups.

"In this example, one or more ads associated with topic 1 might originally be rendered in association with the document 1410. If a user were to follow the link 1414a, interest scores of one or more ads associated with topic 2 could be increased. In this case, upon returning back to document A 1410 from document B 1420, one or more ads associated with topic 2 might now be rendered in association with the document 1410."

The previous quote from the patent shows how google would use your recent browser history along with whatever tags they associate with a page to serve 'relevant' ads. This is similar to what I expect google to do with the doubleclick data they will be receiving shortly.

On a more ominous note, the following claim is a bit unsettling and reminds me of http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/21/1511240 [slashdot.org]. Who's letting all these guys control cameras in our houses?

"9. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein the actions of the user monitored are selected from a group of user actions consisting of (a) cursor positioning, (b) cursor dwell time, (c) document item selection, (d) user eye direction, (e) user facial expressions, (f) user expressions, and (g) express user topic interest input. "

Ummm, somebody at homeland security just wet their lips....

False Positives

[Hemogoblin (982564)]

I predict lots of false positives on FBI Agents.

If its greek to you...

[melete (640855)]

...then you probably shouldn't be making up ridiculously misleading headlines. If you A) actually read the patent application and B) understand ANYTHING about the terminology used, you'd realize that there's nothing about "tracking and targeting children" in it. It's about Google extending their applications of graph theory to determine demographic data about their viewers. This has been, after all, their core competency ever since they were founded.

Analysis of the two patents

[Alsee (515537)]

Someone smart figure this out and post a comment translating patentese into english.

I'm no patent lawyer, but I think I've learned enough to do a reasonable job. There are two patents linked, I'll do the quick easy one first.

Patent 1:
A method for determining user profile information for a user, the method comprising: a) determining initial user profile information for the user; b) inferring user profile information for the user; and c) determining the user profile information for the user using both the initial user profile information and the inferred user profile information.

WTF! Software patents are bad, business method patents are bad, but this is just INSANE!

(a) you have an existing profile for someone.
(b) You "infer" profile information for someone.
(c) You use the old info plus the new info to UPDATE the profile.

We want a patent on updating a profile.
Well, ok, we only want the patent when you "infer" information and update a profile.
We want a patent on the very idea of "inferring" information to update a profile.

Yes, this patent really is worse than the "method of swinging sideways on a swing" patent.

I want to scream. Can I scream on the internet? Can I strangle someone? Please?

I'm sure some people are looking at the patent and reading the abstract - the abstract doesn't matter. The description doesn't matter either. And I'm sure people are looking at the additional claim numbers, well in this case they don't matter either. The way patents work each claim number is like a separate patent. Claims 1 through 64 are like 64 separate patents all filed on one form. If claim 1 is a patent on the wheel and a claim 2 patent on a super-duper laser powered 4 dimensional wheel, claim 2 generally doesn't matter because ANY wheel already violates claim 1.

The way you read a patent is you read claim 1, and then you also check up on any claim number that does *not* mention an earlier claim number. A claim that mentions an earlier claim number is a dependent claim already covered by the lower number claim, and can be ignored. A claim that does not mention an earlier claim is like a new independent patent and you have to check that it might cover something claim 1 didn't cover.

Patent 2:
You have to do everything below to violate the patent.

A computer-implemented method

Software.

Software is not patentable, but this is the magic patentese phrase for software running on a computer. So in patentese this is patentable.

for generating a document with optimizable topic-relevant ads,

Software that inserts targeted ads.

the method comprising: a) for each of a plurality of document regions of the document, determining a topic,

Patentese has an issue with non-specific numbers. It has fancy language for "one or more". This text saying a document might be treated as a "one or more" regions. For example you might consider each story on the Slashdot front page as a separate region.

So, make a list of One Or More topics in One Or More sections.

wherein the plurality of document regions are intrinsic to the document, and thereby independent of how the document is being viewed and of a user viewing the document;

That is essentially patenese for "webpage".

b) using at least the determined topics, associating, with each of the plurality of document regions, a different set of one or more topic-relevant ads;

Software that picks One Or More targeted ads relevant to One Or More parts of the page.

c) determining, from among the plurality of topics, a topic interest of a user;

The page talks about cars and shoes, pick one.

d) adjusting the scores of the ads using at least the determined topic interest of the user;

Rank all of the selected matching ads. You have to do so at least in part based on the "topic of interest", but you can rank base on other stuff too. W

They are tracking a lot more than this

[pcause (209643)]

This patent is just a sample of the tracking and targeting that Google is doing. They talk about "anonymous" tracking, but give the content and patterns of access they can do a good job figuring out who you are and what you interests are. They are looking at your web surfing, email, chat, bookmarks, etc. Google toolbar and desktop are there so they can spy on you when you are browsing anywhere.

If the government was spying on you like this there would be a revolution. Google is completely unaccountable a

Do No Evil?????

[3seas (184403)]

Software patents are evil as they are dishonest in regards to the genuine nature of software.

See: Abstraction physics [abstractionphysics.net] for an expose of the genuine nature of software.

Re:

[Ilgaz (86384)]

And thousands/millions of Google Adwords having/paid "fans" will defend them. Perfectly legal pyramid scheme for you.

Re:

[LaughingCoder (914424)]

Ummm, I think you made a few mistakes. First, and most blatantly, those balloons need to be non-latex because some people have allergies. Second, Disneyland is evil because they make a profit based on their long-protected Mouse copyrights, so perhaps it would be better for the magical unicorns to whisk them instantly away to the Summer of Code, where they will be given a high-end laptop running Linux-du-jour, and a 3 month stipend to write more high quality code to give back to the community.

Re:i need a good priced lcd

[toddestan (632714)]

anyone here no where i can find a good priced lcd? 15-17"

Thanks.

Have you tried Froogle [froogle.com]*?

*Hey, it's on topic!