Google, ads and privacy

Last sunday, The New York Times publised this article Google Wants to Dominate Madison Avenue, Too by SAUL HANSELL

"Google already sells its text ads for many other sites on the Internet (including nytimes.com), and is also moving tentatively to sell the picture-based interactive advertising preferred by marketers who want to promote brands rather than immediately sell products. Now it is preparing to extend its technology to nearly every other medium, most significantly television. It is looking toward a world of digital cable boxes and Internet-delivered television that will allow it to show commercials tailored for each viewer, as it does now for each Web page it displays."

And this blog by Jack Schofield from Guardian Unlimited, Google, advertising, and the future of privacy

" The scary bit is that Google can target ads better if it knows more about you. And if it knows everything you have ever seached for on Google, knows who your friends are (Orkut), has read all your email (Gmail) and instant messages and listened to your phone calls (Google Talk) then it may well know far about you than your parents, your spouse or your boss."
....
"Of course, Google doesn't tie all your personal information together in a Big Brother-style database, yet. But if Google doesn't, then Yahoo or Microsoft MSN or some new service almost certainly will. At the moment, Google says it only uses location information (ZIP codes)"