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Google Confirms That It's Designing Kid-Friendly Versions of Its Services

Posted by samzenpus on from the won't-somebody-please-think-of-the-children? dept.

An anonymous reader writes USA Today reports that rumors about Google working on specific services catering to young kids are true. From the article: "With Google processing 40,000 search queries a second — or 1.2 trillion a year — it's a safe bet that many of those doing the Googling are kids. Little surprise then that beginning next year the tech giant plans to create specific versions of its most popular products for those 12 and younger. The most likely candidates are those that are already popular with a broad age group, such as search, YouTube and Chrome. 'The big motivator inside the company is everyone is having kids, so there's a push to change our products to be fun and safe for children,' Pavni Diwanji, the vice president of engineering charged with leading the new initiative, told USA TODAY. 'We expect this to be controversial, but the simple truth is kids already have the technology in schools and at home,' says the mother of two daughters, ages 8 and 13. 'So the better approach is to simply see to it that the tech is used in a better way.'"

4 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. The real question is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    besides the obvious filtering of content, will Google also be limiting advertisements and tracking of kids searches?

    1. Re:The real question is by Jahta · · Score: 4, Interesting

      besides the obvious filtering of content, will Google also be limiting advertisements and tracking of kids searches?

      I would imagine it will be targeting adverts at kids, and tracking just as much.

      A more interesting question is "how will Google determine who is a kid?". Will adults have to login to get the grown-up version, and prove that their login really belongs to an adult by providing, for example, credit card details?

      Now you have tracking that's worth big money to marketeers.

    2. Re:The real question is by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 4, Interesting

      besides the obvious filtering of content, will Google also be limiting advertisements and tracking of kids searches?

      I would imagine it will be targeting adverts at kids, and tracking just as much.

      That's going to be a serious problem. I don't know about other jurisdictions, but here it's illegal to target advertising to young kids.

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  2. Kids are a challenge. Especially with software. by blueshift_1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm really glad Google are taking this on. This is just a challenging age group because so much mental/cognative development occurs in this time. Something that is increadibly informative for a 7 year old can quite uninteresting to a 10 year old. Finding a way to make it instructive, intuitive, and generally usefull without alienating age groups will be challenging. I'm curious what they come up with.