You’ve managed to pull this article into something of a segue into an article I have planned for later on — the search engines warned over data retention by the European Commission.

All of which undermines a concept of mine, which I call the Found Engine, something that would rely on huge stores of personal data…

The amount of historical data they’d need in place before they could start offering up Social Ads with any degree of accuracy would be formidable.

Google had me making a tin foil hat when I read an article in The Register that they are developing eavesdropping software to serve you “relevant ads”. Who knows how much data they have on the average person.

Essentially, it’s an infrastructure for their Gadgets, which are just small, stand-alone applications.

Of the technologies Google have right now, their Social Graph is by far the most promising. But a control mechanism for Social Media it is not. If anything, it’s a lubricant, but one that’s not foundational, in the sense that Social Media would survive without it.

In fact, if Google hadn’t come up with something like the Social Graph, someone else would have…

The first time I saw one of these ads on FaceBook I was totally freaked out, I was very happy when they gave us the option to opt out of such ads.

I have to admit, I think of Google as being so much more than just search anymore, I rarely use it for search, unless I’m researching something for work, but I use so many of their other services. I will be very sad if Google does leave because of Social Media, but I completely agree that Google needs to figure out a way to become a player in the social media world. I’m sure if they put their minds to it, they could be just as good, socially speaking, as Digg or StumbleUpon.