Google's Super Bowl ad - video and instant analysis

http://www.reputationdefenderblog.com/2010/02/07/googles-super-bowl-ad-proves-that-google-knows-too-much/

by slapshot • 16 years ago

15 25 16 years ago

reputationdefenderblog.com

w1ntermute2• 16 years ago

Remind me to clear my search history more often.

Doesn't Google store search data even after the user has cleared it from their history?

ryandvm• 16 years ago

Yes - this guy is heavy on drama and short on logic.

Here's a thought: If you don't want Google to know what questions you ask - don't ask Google any questions.

w1ntermute2• 16 years ago

Or use Scroogle: https://ssl.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbw.cgi?Gw=%s

Substitute %s with your search term.

mkinsella• 16 years ago

Great ad with no bullshit that shows off the core of Google. It was funny, memorable, and different than the rest of the Super Bowl commercials.

peterb• 16 years ago

I respectfully disagree. I thought it was melodramatic, not funny and missed the mark for the vast majority of the audience watching.

truebosko• 16 years ago

Have you ever been in love? ;)

SilentCal• 16 years ago

You'd have a hard time actually reconstructing a life from a search history, because there would be so much noise. For every search that reflects an important life decision, there will be dozens (hundreds? thousands? I can't estimate very well) that you entered out of idle curiosity, random whims, etc. The significance of the ad is that those important searches will take place. Google will have no way of knowing which ones they are.

EricBurnett• 16 years ago

Yes and no. I have 18000 searches in my history, so I agree that you can't easily go through them all and trace out my life. And yet it is very simple to search it for trends, key events, or even pick a day and see what was going on then. I can do that, and Google can certainly do that (algorithmically of course). Now, I don't have a problem with that (and I value the ability to look back through my own life), but it does represent a trove of personal information.

mixmax• 16 years ago

Google's data-mining fu is extremely strong. This is what they do for a living. I'm sure they would be able to reconstruct a life if they choose. For every important life decision there's probably more than one search involved (having a baby? you'll search for crib, babyfood, baby crying, how to change diapers and much more) and it is certainly possible to pick that out from random searches for cribs because of boredom, checking it for a friend, etc.

If you move (change IP) Google will be able to track you if you use any of their sign-in services (example@gmail.com now regularly logs in from this IP instead of the old one). Your only chance of breaking this chain is either to regularly use proxies or to change IP and gmail (and other services) simultaneously.

nostrademons3• 16 years ago

This is basically the plot of Caprica. Zoe created a search engine so powerful that when she died, it was able to reconstruct her personality from publicly available information about her. Then her father downloaded her into a robot, and thus was born the first Cylon....

patio11• 16 years ago

You'd have a hard time actually reconstructing a life from a search history, because there would be so much noise.

Did you see the analysis of the AOL data leak? There is one particular woman in there where consecutive queries and a little editing show a story of her relationship with an abusive boyfriend, accidental pregnancy, abortion, and remorse.

People found it by, essentially, just grepping a flat text data file for terms they knew were likely to resolve to a hot button issue, then separating the wheat from the chaff. This is the "solution you can knock out in vi in ten minutes" answer. If you have a team of Google-style engineers, a large volume of search queries with unique IDs on them, and a Hadoop cluster available, you can make sift-and-winnow as many gigabytes as you have down to as few salient details as you want.

Trivial example: I would stake money on being able to correctly identify the gender of over 80% of users given 100 searches from them, and I would be able to do this with less than one day of programming. If you let me do it in other than realtime, I would be able to do this at terabyte scales using EC2 and Hadoop. And I'm just a guy who did natural language processing in college and has a bit of basic web-fu available. Think of what you could do with a talented engineering team, deviousness, and a few months to work on it.

eordano• 16 years ago

I just went through my last two months of Google Web History, and I can tell you, it doesn’t reveals anything that anyone that know me doesn’t know. The fact is that every day web searches are not as interesting as the ones in the ad.

Most of them in my case are software development-related stuff. Before being so afraid of “the power that google has” just check you history: it’s less frightening than what commercial made you believe.

dmix• 16 years ago

It'd be nice to be one of the sites at the top of those SERP's during the super bowl.

JacobAldridge• 16 years ago

Signal v Noise - suddenly having your server overwhelmed with 'interested superbowl watchers', and then losing people actually looking to buy your product is not so nice.

But (almost) any publicity is good publicity, and this may inspire a few people to fly to Paris / get married in Paris / make a DIY crib etc, which has positive flow on.

grandalf• 16 years ago

flagged for a sensational, reddit-bait article concept.

andyjdavis• 16 years ago

I don't own a tinfoil hat but that was pretty creepy. The idea of this corporation portraying itself as some sort of buddy who will be by my side as I go through life...

To me it comes across as a mixture of arrogance and over familiarity. Google wants to know us better so they can serve more targeted ads. That desire is not reciprocal. Not for me at least. Its like it never crossed their mind that people may not be as pleased as they are at the idea of an ad network being their best buddy.

potatolicious2• 16 years ago

> "The idea of this corporation portraying itself as some sort of buddy who will be by my side as I go through life..."

But often they are. Example: I grew up watching James Bond movies - I still watch James Bond movies, and there will probably be many more Bond movies between now and when I die. It's a known quantity - despite whatever different directors have done to the franchise, it's a mainstay and recognizable part of my existence.

In some ways, it is a buddy that will be by my side as I go through life.

Now, I can be cynical about it and see Bond as merely a corporate, franchised brand being foisted upon me as the unsuspecting consumer... But I choose to see Bond as something genuine people have put genuine care into creating for my consumption. It's not nearly so bad if you put it that way, eh?

I don't think Google is entirely off its rocker trying to portray itself as my "buddy" - because it is. It knows everything I've ever wondered about, either publicly or privately, and so far anyway its products respond to my needs much better than any of its competitors (GMaps vs. MapQuest, for example).

iheartmemcache• 16 years ago

Since my comment is stuck in moderation limbo on reputationdefenderblog, I'll paste it here:

",,,I think Google meant the ad to show that it is powerful."

I don’t think the commercial’s primary intent was to display the "power" of Google, but rather the day to day usefulness of their engine.

Interestingly enough, the overwhelming initial response to this ad campaign has been positive from girls in their mid-20s (I saw a copious amount of "awws" in my twitter feed), and "mehs" from their male geek counterparts (who already probably use Google anyways.)

We weren’t exactly the target demographic of this ad. Home run, Google- you slammed this one out of the park.

houseabsolute2• 16 years ago

All this proves is that geeks think about things very differently than normal people.

nostrademons3• 16 years ago

Also: that geeks are getting laid now, just like normal people.

potatolicious2• 16 years ago

"Google user" = "geek" now?

brown9-2• 16 years ago

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/love-and-super-bowl.h...

1. The ad wasn't made for the Super Bowl

2. There are other ads in the "search stories" series

sp332• 16 years ago

The flight number is different, because the other one would start returning suggestions for guns as you were typing it.

Google's Super Bowl ad - video and instant analysis

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