There it is in The Guardian:

Internet giant Google has drawn up plans to compile psychological profiles of millions of web users by covertly monitoring the way they play online games.

Yep, “do no evil” Google has filed a patent on the process of building psychological profiles of its users for sale to advertisers.

Details such as whether a person is more likely to be aggressive, hostile or dishonest could be obtained and stored for future use, it says… Players who spend a lot of time exploring “may be interested in vacations, so the system may show ads for vacations”. And those who spend more time talking to other characters will see adverts for mobile phones.

Google claims it has no immediate plans to to use the technology, but the company did spend $23M to acquire AdScape, an in-game advertising company.

Adscape Media offers dynamic delivery of advertising with plot and storyline integration — making its solutions a truly interactive marketing platform. Adscape Media supports sophisticated demographic and geographic targeting and also provides a robust reporting interface for marketers.

And The Guardian also reports the patent application goes beyond psychological profiling:

Not all the inferences made by monitoring user activity rely on subtle psychological clues, however. “In a car racing game, after a user crashes his Honda Civic, an announcer could be used to advertise by saying ‘if he had a Hummer, he would have gotten the better of that altercation’, etc,” the patent says. And: “If the user has been playing for over two hours continuously, the system may display ads for Pizza Hut, Coke, coffee.”

Siva Vaidyanathan quips:

While it is violating gamer privacy on behalf of advertisers, will Google collect and disclose data about gamer sexism? And would this convince the folks at Linden Labs to integrate into their product dependable, remunerative employment opportunities for Second Life players who don’t want to do sex work?

(Via Discourse.net.)

Also interesting, but not from Google: METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR OBTAINING REVENUE FROM THE DISTRIBUTION OF HYPER-RELEVANT ADVERTISING THROUGH PERMISSIVE MIND READING, PROXIMITY ENCOUNTERS, AND DATABASE AGGREGATION. Permissive mind reading!

profiling, psychological profile, google, evil, advertising, online gaming, world of warcraft, second life

My first reaction to the notion of librarians running reading groups in Second Life was a question of whether this was akin to putting a reference desk in a bar.

My second reaction was a question of how our systems will support these extra-library interactions. Can people quickly and easily trade URLs to access the library materials they’re talking about? Will library systems ever be as easy to use as the game/social environments we’re trying to use them in?

My third reaction is a question of politics. The movement of people online doesn’t respect geographical borders, nor those of gerrymandered political districts. Libraries may serve online users, and some of them will be successful, but our funding models are for local libraries that serve geographically constrained communities.

future libraries, libraries, library, library 2.0, online gaming, online libraries, second life, social gaming, social libraries