The Guardian Unlimited reported on Saturday that Google has "drawn up plans to compile psychological profiles of millions by covertly monitoring the way they play online games". In English, it means that the search engine has registered a new patent that can spy on us. After gathering months of online behavioral patterns, Google could try to make this information available to their advertising overlords for a small fee.

Examples cited in the piece suggested that players in MMOs like World of Warcraft that tend to spend a lot of time talking to other users may be shown ads for mobile phones, or players that spend a lot of time exploring may be targeted for holiday adverts.

A Google spokesperson did not admit that this is specifically what the patent was for, only that Google registers many different patents whether or not they plan to implement them in the future. If they do decide to use it, this patent could in addition monitor data from any console that is hooked up to the internet. Perhaps in the not-so distant future, I can also download a Google "Hole-In-The-Head" extension for my browser so I can at least make the collection of crap I don't want complete. Kim Phu

Google to Target Gaming [MCVUK]

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