Google will start using your picture to sell products to your friends. Google Sets Plan to Sell User

Lodhi

Chief Minister (5k+ posts)

Google Sets Plan to Sell Users’ Endorsements


SAN FRANCISCO — Google, following in Facebook’s footsteps, wants to sell users’ endorsements to marketers to help them hawk their wares.
On Friday, Google announced an update to its terms of service that allows the company to include adult users’ names, photos and comments in ads shown across the Web, based on ratings, reviews and posts they have made on Google Plus and other Google services like YouTube.
When the new ad policy goes live Nov. 11, Google will be able to show what the company calls shared endorsements on Google sites and across the Web, on the more than two million sites in Google’s display advertising network, which are viewed by an estimated one billion people.
If a user follows a bakery on Google Plus or gives an album four stars on the Google Play music service, for instance, that person’s name, photo and endorsement could show up in ads for that bakery or album.

Google said it would give users the chance to opt out of being included in the new endorsements, and people under the age of 18 will automatically be excluded.
Such product endorsements, especially coming from friends and acquaintances, are a powerful lure to brands, replicating word-of-mouth marketing on a broad scale.
But as Facebook has learned, many users have strong and skeptical feelings about their endorsements being used in ads without their explicit permission.
“The trick to any advertising like this is to avoid coming across as creepy to your user base and have them say, ‘I didn’t want anyone else to know that,'?” said Zachary Reiss-Davis, a Forrester analyst, speaking generally about social ads.

In a notice to users posted on its site on Friday, Google said, “Feedback from people you know can save you time and improve results for you and your friends across all Google services.”
Facebook, the world’s largest social network with 1.2 billion users worldwide, has been aggressively marketing such social endorsements. For example, if you post that you love McDonald’s new Mighty Wings on the chain’s Facebook page, McDonald’s could pay to broadcast your kind words to all your friends, effectively using you as a product endorser.
The company declined to specify exactly how it planned to use endorsements in advertising, what the ads would look like or how brands choose whether to include shared endorsements.
Facebook does not allow its users to opt out of such ads, which it calls sponsored stories, although users can limit how their actions on the social network are used in some other types of advertising.
Google Plus users, on the other hand, will be able to opt out of inclusion in ads on the social network’s settings page.
If a Google Plus user has shared comments with a limited set of people, only people in that circle will see the personalized ads. Ratings and reviews on services like Google Plus Local are automatically public and can be used in ads, unless a user opts out of shared endorsements.

Google had previously shown so-called Plus 1s, votes of approval similar to Facebook likes, in ads across Google sites and its ad network. Google plans to expand that to include “follows,” comments, ratings, reviews and other interactions. Those who have already elected to opt out of using Plus 1s in ads will automatically be opted out of the expansion.
Though 190 million users post on Google Plus and 390 million use the social network indirectly by sharing on other Google sites like YouTube, Google’s variety of services gives it a potentially wider reach.
Currently, Google does not have an ad unit incorporating more social data ready to be used by advertisers, the company said. Instead, the company wants the ability to create such an ad unit in the future and is notifying users in advance.
Although advertising irks some users — even while it helps support free services — social ads have proved particularly contentious.
Facebook recently settled a class-action lawsuit that claimed it had not adequately notified users about how it was using endorsements. In late August, it tried to impose a new privacy policy that would have given the company clearer rights to run social ads without a user’s explicit permission. After privacy groups complained, the Federal Trade Commission began an inquiry into the changes, prompting Facebook to suspend the process.

Google, which is under the supervision of the F.T.C. for a previous privacy violation and has agreed to privacy audits and fines for privacy misrepresentations, is taking pains to show that it has considered the privacy implications of the new ads.
It will notify users of the change with banners on Google’s home page, in search results, in Google Plus notifications and elsewhere. And posts by users who have registered as being under age 18 will not appear in ads, though their posts can still appear in search results or other places that are not commercial in nature.
Shared endorsements are the latest example of the continual push by Google and other Web companies to collate in one place the reams of personal information people share online and use it to personalize people’s online experiences.

Privacy advocates say companies do not generally get meaningful consent from their users before using such information.
“Users reasonably expect that their comments should be used as they intended,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which has tangled with numerous Internet companies, most recently Facebook, over the use of personal information in ads. “People don’t typically race around handing their friends leaflets and advertisements.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/12/t...o-sell-users-endorsements.html?ref=technology
 
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uetian

Senator (1k+ posts)
An excerpt from Google main policies page (www.google.com/policies/terms ):
[h=2]Your Content in our Services
[/h] Some of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.

When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps). Some Services may offer you ways to access and remove content that has been provided to that Service. Also, in some of our Services, there are terms or settings that narrow the scope of our use of the content submitted in those Services. Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to our Services.

You can find more information about how Google uses and stores content in the privacy policy or additional terms for particular Services. If you submit feedback or suggestions about our Services, we may use your feedback or suggestions without obligation to you.
 

Night_Hawk

Siasat.pk - Blogger
Google ads may include user names, photos

Google ads may include user names, photos

(Reuters) / 12 October 2013

The Internet search giant is changing its terms of service starting November 11.

Google plans to launch new product-endorsement ads incorporating photos, comments and names of its users, in a move to match the social ads pioneered by rival Facebook that is raising some privacy concerns.

google_1211213.jpg
The changes, which Google announced in a revised terms of service policy on Friday, set the stage for Google to introduce shared endorsements ads on its sites as well as millions of other websites that are part of Googles display advertising network.

The new types of ads would use personal information of the members of Google+, the social network launched by the company in 2011.
If a Google+ user has publicly endorsed a particular brand or product by clicking on the +1 button, that persons image might appear in an ad. Reviews and ratings of restaurants or music that Google+ users share on other Google services, such as in the Google Play online store, would also become fair game for advertisers.
The ads are similar to the social ads on Facebook, the worlds No. 1 social network, which has 1.15 billion users.
Those ads are attractive to marketers, but they unfairly commercialize Internet users images, said Marc Rotenberg, the director of online privacy group EPIC.
Its a huge privacy problem, said Rotenberg. He said the US Federal Trade Commission should review the policy change to determine whether it violates a 2011 consent order Google entered into which prohibits the company from retroactively changing users privacy settings.
Users under 18 will be exempt from the ads and Google+ users will have the ability to opt out. But Rotenberg said users shouldnt have to go back and restore their privacy defaults every time Google makes a change.
Information Google+ users have previously shared with a limited circle of friends will remain viewable only to that group, as will any shared endorsement ads that incorporate the information, Google said in a posting on its website explaining the new terms of service.
Google, which makes the vast majority of its revenue from advertising, operates the worlds most popular Web search engine as well as other online services such as maps, email and video website YouTube.
The revised terms of service are the latest policy change by Google to raise privacy concerns. Last month, French regulators said they would begin a process to sanction Google for a 2012 change to its policy that allowed the company to combine data collected on individual users across its services, including YouTube, Gmail and social network Google+. Google has said its privacy policy respects European law and is intended to create better services for its users.
Googles latest terms of service change will go live on November 11.
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/kt-arti...r/technology_October16.xml&section=technology
 

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