I'm only annoyed at the idiocy I encounter in a all-too-frequently-ever-more-dumbed-down society, when I stop to think about the ways in which it can be, and is, so often dumbed-down.

The “revolution in advertising” is simple and logical (though it adds another concern you may have about Big Brother; after all, knowing what you buy, implying _learning_ what you buy, is one item the chief mentioned specifically), and I wonder what kind of progress he and they (at Google) will make on this.

“Too bad they got all police state on us and track everything we do, sell us out to advertisers and kowtow to repressive regimes like China.”

Their silly leftism was also accompanied by this and other hypocrisies — it's annoying _and_ laughable.

Google is a remarkable company that has revolutionized the internet search. Their success is not surprising. Having used just about every search engine, the ability of Google to bring relevant results to the top just crushed the competition. Too bad they got all police state on us and track everything we do, sell us out to advertisers and kowtow to repressive regimes like China. They'd be wise to rethink those things, which are enabling their competitors.

“Manipulating their results” is one way to put it, but there's a business in giving Google-style search capabilities without the big brother aspects. This has spawned several “Google scrapers” that use Google for searching, but protect searchers from Google-eye. My favorite is Scroogle at http://www.scroogle.org

Where Google made interesting news recently was with what its chief (a darling of the left) had to say about what's in the future. It's actually nothing other than a real-world money-making opportunity, which is, for example, also at the heart of T. Boone Pickens's “benevolent” alternative-energy (and water supply delivery) project. (The money's in the water.) Google's chief had said something interesting, which was that he wanted to make Google smarter about identifying characteristics about the users, so as to replace the old-fashioned (guess-right-hopefully-and-) broadcast model for advertising with advertising that was specifically intended for individual users, based on their on-line behavior, purchases, other indications of preferences, hobbies, et cetera. This would mean the right kind of advertising, for the right kind of products, could be aimed specifically at each user. This would of course revolutionize advertising and greatly increase its effectiveness, in theory — and of course, “revolutionize” the ad-charge revenues Google could (and would) reap.