Google is already tracking you on millions of sites, thanks to this little piece of code:
<script src=”http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js” type=”text/javascript”>
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
_uacct=”UA-xxxx-x”;
urchinTracker();
</script>
Do you use GMail? Well, Google is scanning the contents of all your messages, and they also log the IP address you use to check your email – thus, they can tie all your browsing habits to your individual email account and the content of your emails. This is a huge amount of information for any company to gather about individuals. Additionally, Google keeps records of the searches you perform on their engine, thus giving them yet another layer of data to check. Scared yet?
In contrast, Facebook announced that they will be launching a targeted advertising platform with 44 partner sites, which will add a tracking code informing Facebook of your browsing habits. More by Om Malik here. I personally don’t care about 44 sites, but about the millions of sites using Google Analytics, and about the people using GMail to check their corporate email accounts, thus potentially having sensitive material indexed by Google. Food for thought.