Keeping Up: Chronicling Technology Innovation Online

Amazon Honor System

I recently have posted about privacy issues and search logs on Google History so you know by now that I am somewhat concerned about how privacy issue gets worked out over time on the web.  I recently ran across a blog where I saw something quite surprising.  It showed a badge on the page saying "hello Kurt Krake...(linked here as a live example) sponsored by the Amazon Honor System.  Now I thought I had seen everything on the web but this one took me by surprise.  I was on a random blog forwarded to me by a friend and yet Amazon knew I was there and had content - my name (!!) - render on the blog.  Big Brother?

 

Two things come to mind when I see this happen:

1. Why would a site owner put this on their site and freak out a visitor? Amazon Honor System is intended to collect micropayments for websites trying to make a few pennies and recover cost.  I went hunting for what kind of sites had posted this badge on their site and for the most part, I found 3rd tier blogs showing it.  Google shows 1.6 million web pages on exact matching the phrase "Amazon Honor System". Most sites were using it as a sort of online tip jar which (makes sense to me) and had been smart enough to remove the default setting of showing the browser's name.  I was surprised to find a handful of larger sites like CouponSurfer using the badge.  ADVICE:  If you are a website owner with the badge, make sure you set the software to not show someone's name.  The text can be customized to your particular site's content.

2. Why would Amazon make it so in-your-face that they are able to track you across the web?  In the "Google is all knowing" day and age (ie. search history being routinely used now in murder prosecutions), I would think that Amazon would run from this like the plague. Privacy issues are radioactive. Every large web property today is capable of this tracking in some form but to display it openly and display a browser's name is simply too much.  I see this effort as damage to the Amazon brand.

What I discovered is that this service has been in place since February 2001 per Wired Magazine and is probably an idea that got concocted when the Dot Com world was in complete freefall.  It made it through the "thats a great idea" meetings at Amazon then but would be slapped away in heartbeat today.  Hopefully Amazon has not forgotten that they are out there doing this and freaking users out!

Google makes content network more transparent

For those advertising on Google or running campaigns on Google, there is a new report available now finally allowing you to see what sites in the content network are driving clicks.  I recommend immediately running this report for any of your campaigns driving content network clicks and examine the sites that show up. You will likely find tons of "domain Ad" and "error page ad" designations driving the most volume.  These are the domain squatter type AdSense spam sites you see on the web that often infect machines from download sites like LimeWire and BearShare.  If you identify a site that looks like garbage, and I am sure you will, go in to the "excluded sites" link in AdWords and add that domain.  Save some money!

Then go take that money saved....spend it on the sites that are showing in the network that are useful.  A typical optimization step in any good campaign is finally now possible in the Google Content Network.

Google innovation and Google Web History

I was reading the most recent Google Friends newsletter this morning and its clear that many of the items popping up in the monthly updates are coming from Google's commitment to innovation.  Google has been widely publicized for encouraging and expecting employees to spend up to 30% of their time doing things that may not have any bearing on the business - the 70/20/10 model.  Google seems to on a daily basis add features that make you say "How cool is that?" and overwhelm you with new items to ask yourself "how can I apply this to my daily life?"  The release of Google Street View last week was the latest and greatest but its already old news in what could be called "GoogleSpeed". 

A feature that has slowly evolved over time and is worth everyone's time to investigate is Google's web history function. I encourage everyone to look at this latest application because it is a major technology move for Google and ever increases the privacy question that gets nothing but bigger on the web every single day.  Here is what I recommend to educate yourself about this issue and dont skip a step!

1) read directly about it at Google: Google Web History
2) See if you can find it in your own Goole account by logging in with your gmail account
3) read this very thorough and informative post by Danny Sullivan who many of you know is the sage of the search marketing world....read Google Search History Expands, Becomes Web History at SearchEngineLand.  Note that even Danny is showing signs of concern. I guess that means I am not as paranoid as I sometimes think I am about this issue.

Google has made innovation so commonplace that it almost feels too much. But that innovation has propelled them to more than 50% market share and a huge stock price.  I write this blog to chronicle this wave of innovation on the web.  Keeping up with that change is how I try to maintain a competitive edge in the web marketing business. I hope it works!