Google Adware? Shudder...
John Battelle, and before him, Gary of SearchEngineWatch, discuss a patent Google filed three days ago. The title: Serving content-relevant advertisements with client-side device support. Read the whole thing (it's one paragraph, ya lazy bum), but the gist is its a patent for a program that delivers ads to your computer. Since Google has sworn never to deliver spyware, this patent either (a) covers somehow a previous Google app, just in ways that are not obvious, or (b) Google is designing a program you will want to install to deliver ads. I'm thinking an offline Gmail POP3 app that still contains Google AdWords. A great way of keeping things profitable and delivering what users want.
- posted by Nathan Weinberg @ 8/30/2004 12:31:00 PM