Just how much are people willing to do to get something for free? When television appeared it was accepting commercial time, with grocery stores it's club cards for discounts, and with the Internet it's tracking and access to behavior.
Of course the issue with the Internet is ones behavior and the data may or may not be well protected. Privacy hasn't stopped millions of shoppers for signing up to get a club card at their grocery store. People gladly let someone track their shopping by what is spent, how often, what days, and the types of products. Start buying diapers and someone knows you have a new baby (or are baby sitting one).
Just what do our credit card companies do with the data they collect, and how about the bank debit cards that we use for convenience. Where does that data go? I've seen privacy disclosures from banks saying they may share data with partners.
So we've already established that as consumers we'll give up a lot of data about ourselves in exchange for something that's convenient, free, and saves us money.
So where does the Internet come in? Would you be willing to give up the convenience of comparison shopping, finding when your movie was starting, getting maps and directions, and free cloud storage?
Once you establish that you're willing to trade something for these free services and discounts it's just a matter of negotiating what price you're willing to pay. In a capitalist society "free" doesn't really exist since profit drives it so much.
So is our solution to pay for privacy, change behavior and forgo free services, or give up and be part of the global database? So far the choices seem to be to opt for free services and until that changes very little else will.
Google announced a new program for Blogger blogs with a Gadget for "Advertise Products." If the blog has an active AdSense account, writing a blog post that contains copy for an available advertiser will result in the "Advertise Products" Gadget appearing with the option to add it to the blog.
