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Google Patents Detecting, Tracking, Targeting Kids
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Saturday March 22, @11:12AM
from the well-maybe dept.
from the well-maybe dept.
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.
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Ads by Google... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ads by Google... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Holier-than-thou ignorant nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ads by Google... (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you think that FOSS is bad because it's free and taking sales away from commercial software?
Reading a website doesn't form a contract anyway (Score:4, Insightful)
Very odd text from the ToS:
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: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Reading a website doesn't form a contract anywa (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Reading a website doesn't form a contract anywa (Score:4, Informative)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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:Reading a website doesn't form a contract anywa (Score:4, Funny)
Please don't let my wife know about this.
Uhoh (Score:2, Funny)
What's so interesting about it? (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hmmm (Score:2)
Stupid software patents leading to stupid lawsuits. Gotta love our patent and legal s
Extremely misleading headline. (Score:4, Informative)
Prior Art! (Score:2)
"easy, ya just don't lead 'em as much!"
this seems like an easy thing to do: (Score:3, Insightful)
#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
Prior art : Paedophilles (Score:4, Funny)
Bad taste? Nah, you guys love it as much as you love dead baby jokes.
not just children (Score:4, Informative)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
If its greek to you... (Score:4, Insightful)
Analysis of the two patents (Score:4, Interesting)
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. We want the patent no matter how you do the ranking, so long as it involves the "topic of interest".
We can summarize everything up to this point as "standard ad serving software".
Now the patent says something potentially new:
and e) serving, for rendering to the user, an updated set of ads in association with the document
You're already viewing a page with ads, now we are going to send NEW ads down the pipe to replace them.
using at least the adjusted scores, wherein each of the ads of each of the sets of one or more topic relevant ads includes a score, wherein an initial set of ads to be rendered in association with the document is determined using at least the scores of the ads,
Blah blah blah, we sent the old ads based on the old ranking now we send new ads based on new ranking.
wherein the topic interest of the user is determined using at least monitored actions of the user with respect to the document, wherein an amount by which scores of ads are adjusted is determined using, at least, a confidence level that an observed monitored action of the user indicates a user topic interest,
We watch how you move or click the mouse or anything else you do while looking at the webpage, and use that to (re)pick which topic on the page you are interested in, and we re-rank the ads.
But here it gets bizarre:
wherein an amount by which scores of ads are adjusted is greater for a first type of monitored user actions with respect to the document than a second type of monitored user actions with respect to the document, and wherein the second type of monitored user actions includes hovering a pointer cursor over a particular region, centering a particular region on a display, and highlighting at least a portion of a particular region.
We want a patent on targeted web ads, where you update the replace the ads in an already served page, where you watch the user for at least two things, where the first and more important thing you watch for could be ANYTHING, we want a patent where the SECOND and less important thing is "hovering a pointer cursor over a particular region, centering a particular region on a display, and highlighting at least a portion of a particular region".
It strikes me as odd to ask for a patent specifically on this treated as a second less scoring thing, secondary and lesser to any general other thing. Maybe they already submitted some other patent that specified this as a most important factor in ranking ads, and this patent is just to close that "loophole"?
There are 31 other claims in the patent and but they all look equivalant or narrower, so we can ignore them here.
In any case it seems you would almost have to TRY to violate this patent. If you did accidentally violate it you could very trivially work around it.
-
Re:i need a good priced lcd (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks.
Have you tried Froogle [froogle.com]*?
*Hey, it's on topic!