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.

Comments

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[LostCluster]

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.

Reading a website doesn't form a contract anyway

[drinkypoo]

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.

this seems like an easy thing to do:

[romanval]

#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 :)

Holier-than-thou ignorant nonsense

[TheMeuge]

"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:Holier-than-thou ignorant nonsense

[Dachannien]

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 a modern mega-car-making or paper-pushing machine.

If its greek to you...

[melete]

...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.