Slashdot Mirror
Google Nabs Patent To Monitor Your Cursor Movement
bool2 writes "Google has been awarded a patent for displaying search results based on how you move your mouse cursor on the screen... Google's plans are to monitor the movements of the cursor, such as when a user hovers over a certain ad or link to read a tooltip, and then provide relevant search results, and ads, based on that behaviour. It means that it does not require users to actually click a link to know that they were interested in it, opening a world of opportunity for even more focused ads."
Thanks Google, for the disclosure of this invention which society will be free to benefit from in 2030.
Some will say that the game is broken and Google is just obliged to play the game too, but in that case, they could make a promise not to use this patent aggressively. Since there's no such promise, all we can say is that they're stockpiling dangerous patents.
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I wiggle the mouse and randomly highlight text while I'm reading -- it used to confuse and baffle co-workers. Mostly it's just keeping my hand busy.
If they can infer anything meaningful from what is essentially doodling with the mouse, good luck with that. What I'm highlighting or hovering over has little to do with how they might be able to advertise to me. Heck, I think it would be funny to see the results.
And, I somewhat agree with the observations in TFA that there might be some privacy issues here. I already block google analytics on most of my machines.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Uh, Google is already doing that. Search suggestions, tracking the typing speed in form fields (they really do this, apparently so they can detect bots, but it opens up all of those possibilities)... They also see what link you click on their search results via background http request when you click it.
What is the difference between this and a keylogger?
It's one thing to record commands I have sent to their computers by clicking. It's another thing entirely to track things I do on MY computer. I foresee a lot of legislation in Google's future.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Hmm... I wonder if it is possible for a plug-in to trap mouse movements and invoke/ave the link pointed at but report back to the browser engine that something else happened. *face thinking*
Remember to maintain your supply of
Of course they do.
Welcome to the art of Inverse Patents.
You patent the "sexy" form of the Patent concept, but you implement it 1-X. "Draw a burst radius around what you moved your mouse away from to read and correlate with subsequent clicks".
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Why would you need to move your mouse over to a certain part of the screen when you can just look there?
Because something useful pops up when you do, obviously. Try the new Google Image Search to see what I mean.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
You’re missing the point. As long as you have some sort of “hover” action, this applies – in fact, since useful information is often hidden until you mouse-over something, hardware designers are constantly trying to find better ways of implementing hover on touch interfaces.
Go check out Google’s new-and-improved image search results page for a perfect example of this sort of thing. They’ve completely done away with the text surrounding each image – hovering over one of the results for a moment enlarges it and reveals the associated text (URL and text blurb from the page containing it).
In other words, for example, if you perform a search and hover the mouse over all the pr0n on the first page to get a better look, page 2 is going to be dynamically re-sorted to give you more pr0n, and the advertisements will change to ads for adult websites.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Since Apple-haters have completely taken over Slashdot (look at the article openly insulting all iPad users), I'm curious when opinions will turn on Google. Snooping on WiFi networks and archiving their data wasn't enough, CEO Eric Schmidt telling people concerned about privacy that they have something to hide wasn't enough...will tracking your mouse cursor be the final straw? I'm genuinely curious what it will take to push Slashdotters against Google. It's not as if this is an open source company--their primary businesses, search and advertising, are as closed source and proprietary as Windows.