Joseph Stiglitz was quoted in the article as saying all our bailouts are focusing on the past, not the future.  Will throwing money at corporations for innovation work?  or should the government be investing in small businesses?  I am not sure either will work effectively.  This is a little farfetched, but what about making all college graduates publish at least 1 academic paper before graduating?  This would show them the power of creating new ideas and the validity of peer review.  I am not sure it would create jobs, but it would certainly make our society one of thinkers and creators, two ingredients for innovation.

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Yesterday’s NY Times article wrote about the talks and mentioned that the biggest thing holding things up are the privacy concerns that Verizon has.  The authors mentioned that Verizon hasn’t decided how much data about their customers they want to give over to Google.  I am happy Verizon is thinking about my privacy, but I am still concerned.  What data does Google want?  What kind of data is Verizon thinking about giving over?  Is it only about searches?  Does it include my subscriber status?   

I am going to hope that Verizon is only thinking about giving over information related to searches, because even the thought of more than that scares me.  More than search related data includes: how much I pay a month in usage charges, how long I use the phone for a day, how much money I spend in transactions over my phone, how long I have been a customer, if my GPS is on then where I travel, what my local hangouts are and anything else they know about me.  

In a comment to my post about where privacy and marketers meet, Roman said that I shouldn’t fear marketers because the data they have or want is relatively harmless.  I agree, I do not fear marketers.  I fear ad providers and ad networks because their networks and ad space is worthless if they cannot serve ads that will attract the right customer’s attention.  In order to optimize their ad server technology, they would love to know customer demographics, buying power and search and click patterns.  

If the deal goes through will Verizon allow their customers to opt-out of all the data sharing it is doing with Google?  I am sure not, because Google wants to know where you are when you search. They want to be able to serve you ads for a store right in front of you, or a restaurant down the block or reenforce a banner that is on the side of a building across from you.  Not only will they have the ability to serve local ads to you, they will also be able to interpret the meaning of your searches based on proximity.  For example, a search for the word “Prada” will be more valuable if you are on Fifth avenue in New York City than if you are in the Fort Lauderdale airport.  

At the end of the day, I hope we figure out how to curb all this data sharing and tracking across different media and that Verizon Wireless acts responsibly.

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