Internet Outsider: You Own Your Attention! And Google's Cashing In On It...

March 13, 2007

You Own Your Attention! And Google's Cashing In On It...

At the Open Data 2007 conference in New York. Will post some tidbits.

Right now, AttentionTrust.org CEO Seth Goldstein is reminding everyone that we Internet users are what we look at (click on) and that a host of companies are storing that "attention" (and cashing in on it) without our permission.

Seth believes that we own our attention. And that we should be able to control how it is used. And that companies shouldn't be able to store it or use it without our permission. (As a horror story, Seth invokes the "anonymous" AOL searcher who conducted dozens of searches about her dog's urinary problems--and was quickly outed by a New York Times reporter.)

In addition to being a successful entrepreneur, Seth's an intellectual, and this conference is about brainstorming, so Seth turned over the floor without presuming to solve the problem. But he turned it over to the guy who stored (and released) all that search data at AOL: Abdur Chowdhury.

Asked immediately what he would have done differently if he had it to do all over again, Mr. Chowdhury from AOL said he...

Would have moved more cautiously
Would have established licensing agreements so the data could only be used for research.

The silver lining, he says, is that the incident raised awareness of the issue--and spawned conferences like this. Esther Dyson challenges this: Do people really know how much data is being collected? No, says Mr. Chowdhury. Then why release it, someone else asks? The goal, Mr. Chowdhury says, is to help people. Did it help people? An executive from Root Markets says he immediately tried to use the AOL data to spot patterns in mortgage searches, but that there weren't many patterns, so the exercise "quickly descended into voyeurism."

Were there any benefits from the release? Mr. Chowdhury suggests that awareness is good (because we can start thinking about how to solve the privacy problem) and that many companies are now exploring the possibility of licensing data from AOL, Yahoo, etc. Skeptical protests and grumbles: Everyone's giving up their privacy! Everyone's being tracked! Mr. Chowdhury on his heels, but Seth gets up and reminds everyone that nothing is black and white. Esther says the key is selectivity, awareness, and control. We as an industry have to do better! Mr. Chowdhury leaves to applause.

Posted by Henry Blodget on March 13, 2007 at 08:56 AM | Permalink

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Comments

It's nonsense that an individual owns their buying (or searching) patterns and the calls for more government regulation smells of socialism. In every business the owners pay heed to what customers want and at what price - capitalism. If you seek online privacy there are numerous products available for even the novice. Also, if people noticeably cared so much about privacy they'd leave AOL in droves out of fear, and market forces would push companies toward the level of privacy people seek. These two gentlemen have no idea what fluctuating level of privacy people want and neither does the government.

Posted by: Siggyboss | March 13, 2007 at 11:10 AM