Everyone seems to be approaching this deal from a strange angle. I understand that it is kind of funny for Google to paying people for their Chrome browsing data, but this just seems to be standard operating procedure for research, market or any other kind. In my university/ramen days, I would do this kind of thing a lot. Nominal fees, often dispensed via gift card, as incentive for your time/contribution. I suspect the Knowledge Networks/Google partnership in this case is much more Knowledge Networks than Google.
This is really interesting; by giving due consideration for access to your browsing habits and the sites you visit and so forth, they admit that this is not something that they could necessarily have presumed to use for free. The $25 protects them, but I think in some ways it also protects us, or at least future-us.
I think they get to track all pages you visit, time spent per page, which parts of the page are in the viewport, for how long, where on the page you click, etc.
I doubt it, some CPM on things like travel sites are easily $25, 3 adds per page, you browse for say a fortnight looking at holidays you'll easily hit your 1000 views/$25 mark
That would be the best system. 95% of all revenue generated through use of the data, with transparent accounting of every use of the data. Some of that can be hard to quantify, but Google has already run these numbers. They wouldn't float a program like this if they didn't already know that a persons browsing history for a year can be used by them to bring in several thousand times more revenue than it will cost.
(As to how I got 95%.. I figured 10% is the centuries-old standard "finder's fee" people collect when they hook up a buyer and a seller. Google isn't even doing this. They're doing more the equivalent of 'let us harvest all the wheat from your field, and we'll go sell it'. Google can't grow the wheat, so they have to buy it from someone else. You could sell it directly, but it would be a minor pain in the ass. So they're likely entitled to about half of the standard finder's fee.)
This is exactly the data Google and MSFT and others get from toolbars. Google and MSFT use this kind of data to improve search results (noting how long users stay on a site, etc.). It's key to the Panda update. So it's no wonder Google pays people to install this.
Google doesn't know all your Web History. For example it knows which links you clicked in search results but it doesn't know how much time you spent on them, when you closed them or which links you clicked on those pages.
Then it can track only links you click on Google websites. So you clicking on your friend's profile in Facebook will not get logged in here. Unless it is browser extension it can not track * every * link.
if you use the google toolbar for firefox, you can opt in to web history which tracks exactly what you say. i didn't see the option for it in chrome, and i don't think they make the toolbar for firefox anymore (?) but i used to find it a very useful feature.
I can't parse the "would" here. Either you do it or you don't. What does "would" mean in this context? (unless you can't do it because you are not yet 13 years old)
