Sunday, February 13, 2005

UPI and Google: A match made in...Detroit?

I was cruising UPI, looking for news.

Came across this:
Detroit's Hotel Pontchartrain to be auctioned
DETROIT, Feb. 12 ( UPI)- The 413-room Hotel Pontchartrain, a Detroit downtown waterfront landmark that has suffered with a weak occupancy rate, will be sold at auction. 09:40 Feb 12, 2005

Then I noticed the GOOGLE ads, on the entire left side of the display. It went like this:

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Pontchartrain Hotel
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So, the deal is this: If you look at a news story that says a hotel is going bankrupt, GOOGLE assumes you want to go there. Okay, it is a bit much to expect the AI to be able to tell good news from bad news. But isn't it a little eerie that the ads shown respond to your news item selections?

So...I google "Larry Page is a dildo" and...voila! Up comes an ad for "The Dildo Store" (you are going to have to look up that URL for yourself, you sick thing).

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