(no subject)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/03/google_eavesdropping_software/
The first thing that came out of our mouths when we heard thatGoogle is working on a system that listens to what's on your TV playingin the background, and then serves you relevant adverts, was "that'scool, but dangerous".
The idea appeared in Technology Review citing PeterNorvig, director of research at Google, who says these ideas will showup eventually in real Google products - sooner rather than later.
The idea is to use the existing PC microphone to listen to whateveris heard in the background, be it music, your phone going off or the TVturned down. The PC then identifies it, using fingerprinting, and thenshows you relevant content, whether that's adverts or search results,or a chat room on the subject.
And, of course, we wouldn’t put it past Google to store thatinformation away, along with the search terms it keeps that you'veused, and the web pages you have visited, to help it create apersonalised profile that feeds you just the right kind ofadverts/content. And given that it is trying to develop alternativeapproaches to TV advertising, it could go the extra step and help send"content relevant" advertising to your TV as well.
We suspect that such a world would be rather eerie, with a constant feeling of déjà vu every time anyone watched TV.
Technology Review said Google talked about thissoftware in Europe last June, and that it breaks sound into afive-second snippets to pick out audio from a TV, reducing the snippetto a digital "fingerprint", which it matches on an internet server.
Given the furore caused when AOL released searches on the internet,there might be more than a few civil liberties activists less thanhappy for Google to put this idea into practice. Also, given thatGoogle provides the software link between its search software and themicrophone, it's a small step to making the same link to any webcamsattached to the PC.
Pretty soon the security industry is going to find a way to hijack the Google feed and use it for full on espionage.
Google says that its fingerprinting technology makes it impossiblefor the company (or anyone else) to eavesdrop on other sounds in theroom, such as personal conversations, because the conversion to afingerprint is made on the PC, and a fingerprint can't be reversed, asit's only an identity.
But we should think that "spyware" might take on an extra meaning ifsomeone less scrupulous decided on a similar piece of software.
The Google program converts sound into graphs, weeds out backgroundnoise, and reduces the graphs to key features that can then betranslated into just four bytes of information, so that thefingerprints for an entire year of television programming would add upto no more than a few gigabytes, the company said.
Meanwhile, in an unconnected announcement this week, Google said ithas signed a multi-year agreement with online auction giant eBay, toprovide text-based advertising outside the US.
The companies also plan to launch a "click-to-call" advertising function on eBay using Skype and Google Talk.
The first thing that came out of our mouths when we heard thatGoogle is working on a system that listens to what's on your TV playingin the background, and then serves you relevant adverts, was "that'scool, but dangerous".
The idea appeared in Technology Review citing PeterNorvig, director of research at Google, who says these ideas will showup eventually in real Google products - sooner rather than later.
The idea is to use the existing PC microphone to listen to whateveris heard in the background, be it music, your phone going off or the TVturned down. The PC then identifies it, using fingerprinting, and thenshows you relevant content, whether that's adverts or search results,or a chat room on the subject.
And, of course, we wouldn’t put it past Google to store thatinformation away, along with the search terms it keeps that you'veused, and the web pages you have visited, to help it create apersonalised profile that feeds you just the right kind ofadverts/content. And given that it is trying to develop alternativeapproaches to TV advertising, it could go the extra step and help send"content relevant" advertising to your TV as well.
We suspect that such a world would be rather eerie, with a constant feeling of déjà vu every time anyone watched TV.
Technology Review said Google talked about thissoftware in Europe last June, and that it breaks sound into afive-second snippets to pick out audio from a TV, reducing the snippetto a digital "fingerprint", which it matches on an internet server.
Given the furore caused when AOL released searches on the internet,there might be more than a few civil liberties activists less thanhappy for Google to put this idea into practice. Also, given thatGoogle provides the software link between its search software and themicrophone, it's a small step to making the same link to any webcamsattached to the PC.
Pretty soon the security industry is going to find a way to hijack the Google feed and use it for full on espionage.
Google says that its fingerprinting technology makes it impossiblefor the company (or anyone else) to eavesdrop on other sounds in theroom, such as personal conversations, because the conversion to afingerprint is made on the PC, and a fingerprint can't be reversed, asit's only an identity.
But we should think that "spyware" might take on an extra meaning ifsomeone less scrupulous decided on a similar piece of software.
The Google program converts sound into graphs, weeds out backgroundnoise, and reduces the graphs to key features that can then betranslated into just four bytes of information, so that thefingerprints for an entire year of television programming would add upto no more than a few gigabytes, the company said.
Meanwhile, in an unconnected announcement this week, Google said ithas signed a multi-year agreement with online auction giant eBay, toprovide text-based advertising outside the US.
The companies also plan to launch a "click-to-call" advertising function on eBay using Skype and Google Talk.