Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Google KNOWS!

I noticed an interesting phenomenon the other day. I usually have GAIM running under Linux, on my laptop, while often my Gmail account is logged in on my desktop. Strangely, when I get messages on googletalk, they seem to somewhat randomly appear on one or the other computer, but not both. Soon it became clear that if I used the desktop, messages would quickly start going to the desktop. If I used the laptop, the messages would just as quickly start going there.
After independently verifying this behavior with a friend of mine, I believe that Google has a full tracking system set up. They KNOW every time you touch your computer (GoogleTalk monitors mouse/keyboard input apparently), as does Gmail loaded in Firefox. Do they log this demographic information back home for future use? Who knows.. but I'll sleep better knowing that Google knows I've quit for the night.

1 comment:

Undertwotimes said...

Yes, this reminds me of that onion article, something like: "Starbucks enters sinister phase 2 of operation."