Friday, February 17, 2012

Miner 49er…


Two really interesting stories that are more connected that you might think.
The first was Google admitting to circumventing the security of the Safari browser when it was set to prohibit websites from using tracking cookies. You can find that story here.

The second was in Forbes talking about how retailer Target was able to identify that a teenage girl was pregnant before her father was able to know. That story is here.


Both stories have one common theme. Data Mining. Whether it is mining the data from store purchases and using that data to generate more sales, or mining the data from internet searches to generate better searches and ad revenue, it is still data mining.

So this data mining doesn’t have to be evil or even a breach of privacy. If you want to see who Google thinks you are, go here. This is some of the data they use to provide suggestions and ads to you. I can tell you I think this is much more helpful that the old way ads used to be put on search portals or in the results.

We all want great customer support. We all want our computers and websites to read our minds. We all want this to happen without sharing any data. We are all dreaming, and Google can tell us about what with about an 80% accuracy…

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