Bill D -

One of the things I picked up on in the article is that if you use Google at all - tool bar or not - they still do track some of what you do, probably in the same ways that the other search engines do, and probably only while you're "in Google."

In order to make any search engine useful, there has to be some collection of "preferences." The web is just too big for any searching mechanism to index it all. It would be safe to assume that the majority of search engines at least keep track of how many people look at the sites they index and how many people look for/at a given kind of information. The information is much more useful to them if it also correlates "people who search for this look at that" so you can assume that some information of this kind is collected by most.

I see this "expected statistical gathering" as something necessary in order to improve the search process, although a statistical method may be one of the reasons - as in your local bookstore - an unintelligent search for music turns up little music and a lot of BS on fancults and other performer marketing stuff. That seems to be what the majority of the population believes they want, having been told so by so much advertising.

I don't, on principle, have any problem with the legitimate "click counting" that's needed; and although I'm not a "majority group" user, I don't really mind them targeting "teeny-boppers with bucks" - the likely ultimate result of the statistical method. (Note - the TBWB group includes a lot of really old people.)

Unfortunately, in our advertising-driven (remember when you could say market-driven) economy, the information collected for the legitimate purpose of making searches work is immensely valuable in the ad-wonk market. Anyone who has such information will probably be under immense pressure to sell it for other uses. Few of the search resources even bother to tell you whether, or how, their information is used for these "other purposes."

(I'll note that my current IE settings will not allow cookies from any site that doesn't have an online "privacy policy" conforming to a particular "standard," so the other engines I've used apparently do "have a policy" that one can search out if desired.)

I appreciate that Google is "up-front" about their tracking, and I'll admit that I did have to "examine my objections" before turning it on. I don't find what they say they are doing sufficiently objectionable to refuse to "be a statistic" for them; but they're likely to find me as a blip on the far end of their curve. Most of the sites they'll find me at are .orgs or tech sites that they don't usually include, except peripherally, in their indexes.

(My "page rank" bar shows the 'cat at about 48%. Maybe I ought to go hit a couple of porn sites just to tweak them?)

John