So yesterday at 12:30 ET the Facebook f8 conference kicked off and compared to most developer conferences it was exceedingly popular, nothing compared to an Apple event but that’s hardly surprising as everyone seems to hate it when Facebook changes the location of a single button, let alone an entire overhaul!

The most drastic change that the average user will see is the redesign of profiles, they have changed them to a timeline style. I have activated it on my own account and I must admit I do like it, although it does seem a bit odd that everyone in your friends list can go back and look at pictures from when you started your account. The main thing that has struck me so far is how stupid my hair looked!

On a more serious note it is an interesting change from Facebook especially as the previous changes have not gone down well with the vast majority and there is now a serious player that can sweep in a poach the discontented users.

The Google Devil

Google could use this to their advantage and make a a play for the Facebook users that are not happy. It is going to be as good a time as any, there is the same amount to get used to so that is no excuse but we will have to see what happens.

Anyway, enough of Google+, this is all about Facebook. The timeline gives the user a profile that has everything they ever did on it, absolutely amazing and really does make you wonder “why do they still have this information” it is a little unsettling for the paranoid among us. It goes back all the way to birth and they are happy for you to fill in the gaps!

From here you can go into each year and then each month of each year! Absolutely amazing.

This opens Facebook to far more intense friend stalking, I will let you decide if that is a good thing or not.

Next is a feature that seems to have been overlooked by many but is far more game changing than the profile change is the introduction of Open Graph, the simplest way to look at it is as a social collaborative tool you can listen to music at the same time as a friend but this is only beginning, the platform has opened up a door for a whole new generation of applications and for me it is going to be great to see what happens as a result of this.

With the introduction and collaboration with the likes of Skype and Sportify and the introduction of Open Graph means that we are moving ever closer to a web experience that involves never leaving Facebook.

Tell us what you think in the comments, will you be developing a new app and have you tried out the new profile layout yet? It has general release on the 30th September, that should give you a whole weekend to get used to it!

Oh yes.

If you don’t use supermarket loyalty cards, are opposed to the idea of identity cards and balk at the size and scope of the police DNA database, think before you click that “search” button…

Google, which has an approximate 90% share of the UK search market, is working harder than ever to profile its users and their (read “your”) online behaviour in order to… err… well who really knows?

Google is a highly secretive company and is not fond of sharing the secrets which are both a source and a result of their huge competitive advantage.

All of this leads to a lot of speculation as to what is going on in the dark, secret chambers of the Googleplex. Well, technically they are more likely to be bright, glass-walled flexible feng shui approved work spaces with strewn with primary-coloured space hoppers, flowers and bowls of fresh fruit, but I digress; observers and regular internet users have noticed a clear trend towards the collection of more and more data for unqualified purposes.

Before you wrap tinfoil around your head, encode all of your emails and start leaving comments on YouTube videos, remember Google’s fabled motto: ‘Don’t Be Evil.’ A company with a motto like that couldn’t be evil, right?
Let’s consider some of the evidence.

Google Toolbar. Before the advent of personalised browsing there was the Google toolbar. If you are reading an SEO company blog, chances are you have the Google toolbar across the top of your browser. Google Toolbar gives you easy access to your gmail (more of that later), bookmarks (why use your browser’s bookmark function when Google’s is 5cm closer and you can take your bookmarks with you?), spell check, awesome translation tool, PageRank (how we’ll miss you when you go) and a wide variety of search options.

In return, Google gets your data.

What sites do you visit? How do you browse? What services do you use? How long do you spend on a site? Even if you are not logged in to any Google account, the toolbar sends this data to… well… somewhere.

Google Chrome is the next step along from the Google Toolbar. Another good tool for the user and another great source of browsing data for Google. But we still prefer Firefox in the office.

Gmail offers us loads of free storage. So we store loads of private, personal things with Gmail. You receive targeted messages from advertisers alongside your private messages.

This is from Gmail’s privacy page:

When you use Gmail, Google’s servers automatically record certain information about your use of Gmail. Similar to other web services, Google records information such as account activity (including storage usage, number of log-ins), data displayed or clicked on (including UI elements, ads, links); and other log information (including browser type, IP-address, date and time of access, cookie ID, and referrer URL).

Google Analytics. Why would Google provide a service that is really worth thousands of Pounds for free? Adding Analytics code to your pages allows Google to learn a huge amount about how people really interact with your content. It’s not hard to see the logic behind this one – all of those interactions that Google could not capture through the toolbar or its own services are trackable from the website end as opposed to the user end. Great stuff!

But how is the data being used? Google ain’t sharing.

So is Google being evil? Depending on your definition of ‘evil’, probably not; but who really knows? What we do know is that they are collecting a huge amount of information about how people use the internet and using that information to offer users better services and shareholders better value.

There is a recurring theme in the way that Google approaches these interactions. Much like supermarkets with their loyalty cards, Google offers something of value for no financial cost, asking only for your data in return. Personally,
I’m happy to make this deal most of the time, but not always.

The recent introduction of personalised results for everyone, whether signed in to a Google account or not, feels like the crossing of some sort of intangible line. Of course, all of Google’s data hoarding has been leading to this: search remains Google’s core product and personalised results are a logical next step to improve experience and create a further separation from competitors (who, it must be said, don’t have the best history of “not being evil”).

You can see Google’s announcement of that service here.

The biggest annoyance with this – and what has concerned some observers – is that the service is an opt-out service as opposed to an opt-in service. So my search results are being “personalised” according to websites that I have visited before? Great. Maybe I don’t want to revisit the sites that I have already seen. This reduces the quality of my “personalised” search results – the opposite of Google’s intention.

Google gives the impression of being a company with a well-tuned moral compass and I am not suggesting that anything else is true. Why would they use all of this harvested data for anything other than providing the best service possible and therefore making money and therefore becoming an even ‘better’ company. And the services that they offer are consistently excellent.

This said, just because a company has no malevolent intentions for all of the data that it holds, does that mean that every single individual within the company is equally as well-intentioned? Who knows.

Do most internet users know how to delete a cookie? Probably not. Would most internet users feel a little bit differently about Google if they knew just how much data the big G was storing? And, due to secure backups, that some of the data is effectively “undeletable”?

Pass the tinfoil…

The Telegraph is reporting that Channel 4 and YouTube have formed a partnership where full length Channel 4 shows will be hosted on the Google-owned site.

As the furore about free content and advertising revenues rumbles on, the two companies appear to have settled upon a deal that is beneficial for both content provider and content host. It will be very interesting to see how this pans out as it is the first significant UK deal between a television channel and YouTube.

The deal will allow Channel 4 to sell the advertising space around its content. If successful, this could form the blueprint for similar future deals.