Google: What if you don’t know any better?

Doing my regular rounds of tech news I came across this article which is a surprisingly candid review on a press conference with Google cofounder Eric Schmidt.

Schmidt rejected the idea that customers are locked in . “There is no closed loop,” he said, “there are competitors and we make it possible for you to get out.”

What one could extrapolate from this statement is that Google does indeed use data (from its non-search products amongst others) to “improve” search

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land was quoted as saying “you seem to have data other people cannot get because you give away free tools”

So, if you don’t know any better then are you fair game?

I’d say it’s probably another good reason to move to Bing

Comments

• Anonymous
  November 21, 2009
  What exactly is wrong with "improving search"? Ever hear of Bing's behavioral ad targeting? They already use "non search data" to improve ads. How is that any less shocking than using "non search data" to improve search?