Privacy, what a quaint notion.

Privacy. Do you remember that? When you left one website, it didn't follow you and keep tracking your personal online activities. At least, the good sites didn't. Only spyware would do that. And good companies didn't use spyware, right?

Well, either good companies do use spyware, or Google has officially turned bad. With "interest based" advertising, google follows you around as you navigate the web. They say it's to determine what you're interested in. They want to serve up ads to you personally, so you'll click on them, based on what "interest" groups they decide you belong to.

I've been using google adsense on my personal sites, for about a year now, and I have to say that I'm rather frustrated with them. As a publisher, I have almost zero control over what ads show up on my sites. It seems to me they'd get similar or even better results, without violating everyone's privacy, if they'd just give publishers more effective tools for influencing which ads show up on our sites.

At this point, I'm very frustrated with Google. Do I go along with Google's plans to follow you as you browse from site to site, or do I pull down my google ads? I'm not seeing a lot of alternatives out there. If I pull my ads, that still doesn't do you much good. Since I doubt that anyone else is going to pull their ads. Or are they?

It really surprises me that there's been so little buzz about this. Google is saying that I (and all publishers that use Google adsense) need to change my "privacy policy", to reflect their practices. There is something fundamentally wrong about that. Especially since they provide such poor tools for the publisher to customize what ads appear on their sites. Although, the more I blog about Google adsense, the more ads for Google adsense show up on my blogs. It would be nice if they'd serve Adobe ads, when I post about Adobe products.