Phlogiston

James has taken much hilarity and great delight in pointing out to me that the Google Ads on my Friendster profile are for “quit smoking” products and sites offering to help with your alcohol problem. Blimey. When I had a quick look the ads were even worse: “Patriot K-9 Services: Bomb dog teams experienced in Irag and Afghanistan. Available worldwide” and “Bomb Detection Dogs: VIP, Conferences, Executive Sniffer Dogs For Your Protection.” WTF? Apparently Google has gleaned from my Friendster profile that I am an alcoholic who smokes too much and is either a likely member of or likely target of a terror cell. Bloody hell!

Okay, so the picture of me is the only decent picture I have of myself, and it happens to be one of me smoking and holding a glass of Pimms in my hand. But how the hell does Google know what it’s a picure of? They’re basing the whole ad placement for my page on the caption—”Armed to the teeth with Marlboros and Pimms”? There’s a lot more text on that page than that.

And what about the creepy bomb-dogs-to-fight-your-war-on-terror ads? Well, I do describe myself as a “web standards nazi, liberal left-of-centre communitarian type” so clearly I’m a key part of the axis of evil.

No wonder no one wants to friend me on Friendster.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 21st, 2007 at 10:18 pm and is filed under General, Computing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.