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Google's Reach Hits Your Tivo

Posted by timothy on from the no-more-intestinal-products-please dept.

accido writes "As reported by The LA Times, Google has now decided to expand its marketing and data collection to include what you watch on your Tivo. The data collected would help Google, who sells TV ads, show who watches which commercials and who skips right over them. The article outlines how this could be bad for networks that cash in whether you watch the ad or not. Does this mean fewer commercials for viewers? Not likely, but one can hope."

8 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. Whether, not weather by puppetman · · Score: 1, Informative

    Rain has nothing to do with this.

  2. If you want fewer commercials by pwnies · · Score: 2, Informative

    Why not just set up mythtv and have it auto-extract?

  3. Re:Block data collection by Scrameustache · · Score: 2, Informative

    These days, is there anyone left who does NOT block all these data collection and tracking things?

    Most people. They either don't understand, or don't care.

    --

    You can't take the sky from me...

  4. Re:I'm sure 99% by gamecrusader · · Score: 2, Informative

    I've have used tivo for over 3 years and tivo has commercials that can't be fast fowarded through.
    though they rarely come up, but they do exsist

  5. Is Google becoming more evil than MS? by grapeape · · Score: 3, Informative

    While an a purely ethics level I don't care for MS's business practices at least they tend to usually just screw other businesses, Google frankly scares the crap out of me. Its pretty easy to avoid MS but avoiding becoming a google statistic is becoming increasingly impossible.

  6. Re:Easily Fixed! (There's a business idea in this. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Firefox addon TrackMeNot does this. Been using it for eons.

  7. tivo's opt out option by sdnoob · · Score: 3, Informative

    absolutely no mention in TFA of tivo's existing opt-out policy (keeps your tivo from reporting usage and viewing history of your box) and if it will also apply to google's sticky fingers.

  8. Re:Easily Fixed! (There's a business idea in this. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    If Google or others sites are recording & selling our search keys, here's a solution:

    - develop an application that - while our browser is idle -

          selects BOGUS search keys AT RANDOM and sends

          them to Google as if we'd entered them in real searches

    Ie, feed Google a "noisy" stream of search keys, at about
    the same speed as we'd be sending them, if they were
    real searches.

    I have no doubt that such an application would become
    very popular, very soon...

    Any takers?

    PS Are there any such applications in existence today?

    Track Me Not

    http://mrl.nyu.edu/~dhowe/trackmenot/index.html