I think this graph on privacy from the New York Times didn’t get the attention it deserved. Although the companies argued, that they are not collecting individual data but statistical information, it is still a case of data mining versus privacy.
While the web expands, the user’s need for privacy increases.
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Yahoo collects data about its users 84 times a day
privacy robojiannis 12 Mar 2008 6 Comments
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Troy responded on 13 Mar 2008 at 1:32 am #
Wow, I’d really be interested to know what kind of data this is and where it goes. Yahoo seems to have more pages that you need to visit to get anything done than Google does, which probably accounts for some of the difference.
Paul M. Banas responded on 13 Mar 2008 at 2:29 am #
Troy makes a good point. It may be that Yahoo has more internal traffic than a Google, which means that they capture more per click information. With Google, you type in a search phrase and then you are gone. With Yahoo, a lot of the clicks stay on site, since, like AOL, it operates as more of a portal than pure search engine.
I would imagine most of the data in the NY Times graph is internal site traffic movement information. In fact, a typical blog probably captures more data per click per unique visitor than Google, either through capturing Feedburner stats or through Google Analytics, or whatever stat package is in use.
But to Robojiannis’ point, the eyes of the Web are always watching…..
Bill responded on 13 Mar 2008 at 4:42 am #
I don’t think they are doing that much with the data. Sure they data mine you to no end but look at Yahoo. Its got the highest amount of data on it users then other site but its not doing anything with it or at least not publicly. Their stock price is crap. They are not monetizing this data so if they are using it to make better algorithms and features I say let them do it. If they start to use it in a none “research” way then further insight in to the situation is needed.
robojiannis responded on 13 Mar 2008 at 10:58 am #
I don’t think the data just stands there. I bet they use the collected information for better advertising.
But I agree with you Bill, that isn’t the best way of monetization.
Micha responded on 14 Mar 2008 at 2:30 am #
Interesting! Thanks a lot!
Yet, I was wondering if this sheet is based on US data or world wide clicks? Fox, Yahoo and AOL/Time Warner being rated so high in unique visitors sounds strange to me as European based in Germany..
Cherry Lady
robojiannis responded on 14 Mar 2008 at 2:34 am #
@Micha
that’s a good question - considering that this graph was posted in the NY Times, I suppose it is based on US data.
But to be honest, I don’t know…