Suddenly out of nowhere, being under surveillance on the web is big news. Firstly, despite saying it would not be implementing such a feature, it’s AdSense product is now using ‘behaviour targeting’ – giving advertisers away to deliver ads to users who have shown previous interest in similaritems.
Basically, Google tracks you online moves with a cookie, so if you’ve surfed to Apple to check out their new MacBook, following pages with AdSense ads in
will offer you this (or related products). This would then be built on so if you’re looking for a holiday in the South of France (nice), you’ll get Google ads for villas in Nimes.
Despite it being a bit freaky, Google does allow an opt out so at least you can turn this off.