Since my comment is stuck in moderation limbo on reputationdefenderblog, I'll paste it here:<p>",,,I think Google meant the ad to show that it is powerful."<p>I don’t think the commercial’s primary intent was to display the "power" of Google, but rather the day to day usefulness of their engine.<p>Interestingly enough, the overwhelming initial response to this ad campaign has been positive from girls in their mid-20s (I saw a copious amount of "awws" in my twitter feed), and "mehs" from their male geek counterparts (who already probably use Google anyways.)<p>We weren’t exactly the target demographic of this ad. Home run, Google- you slammed this one out of the park.
You'd have a hard time actually reconstructing a life from a search history, because there would be so much noise. For every search that reflects an important life decision, there will be dozens (hundreds? thousands? I can't estimate very well) that you entered out of idle curiosity, random whims, etc. The significance of the ad is that those important searches will take place. Google will have no way of knowing which ones they are.
<a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/love-and-super-bowl.html" rel="nofollow">http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/love-and-super-bowl.h...</a><p>1. The ad wasn't made for the Super Bowl<p>2. There are other ads in the "search stories" series
I don't own a tinfoil hat but that was pretty creepy. The idea of this corporation portraying itself as some sort of buddy who will be by my side as I go through life...<p>To me it comes across as a mixture of arrogance and over familiarity. Google wants to know us better so they can serve more targeted ads. That desire is not reciprocal. Not for me at least. Its like it never crossed their mind that people may not be as pleased as they are at the idea of an ad network being their best buddy.
I just went through my last two months of Google Web History, and I can tell you, it doesn’t reveals anything that anyone that know me doesn’t know. The fact is that every day web searches are not as interesting as the ones in the ad.<p>Most of them in my case are software development-related stuff. Before being so afraid of “the power that google has” just check you history: it’s less frightening than what commercial made you believe.