Everyone knows that google products are awesome, not only are they super simple to use, ultra useful, slick in design and free. Does that mean that Google care about their users? Do they love us as much as we love them?

In reading a post by Calvin Robinson about Brand Loyalty his comments of Google is a caring brand got me wondering why he would say that, over and above any other brand. Surely the NGO brands like, UNICEF and Red Cross care! Anyhow, lets get back to Google for a few moments and look into their caring side: Donated $1 million dollars to Haiti; $2 million donated to wikipedia; Enabled it’s e-commerce checkout tool to accept donations for charity; public service ads spread across its vast advertising platform; aiding literacy programmes around the world and so on… after 3 minutes using their search engine, it looks like they really do care.

Great… so now we all love Google, right? We have some of the best free products we’ve ever had access to and they’re no doubt countless more to come… But before we all go off an celebrate the love of a brand, do we really understand what we are getting when we are ‘buying’ into the ‘free’ dream?

Google are first and foremost a advertising business, over 97% of it’s revenues come from this activity. At this point you have to ask yourself why do Google offer me all this free stuff to use? Answer is pretty simple right? To get more ads in front of you so it can make more money. However, the story does not just stop there, marketers have over the years spent billions on trying to understand and reach the right audiences. If data is King then Google are the Emperors of data, they must now know more about your online activities than even you do yourself.

Think about it for a few more seconds. If like me you have a google account then chances are you have an online address book, a profile page, a buzz account to name but a few. Google knows your search history, it knows who your friends are, it knows how important they are by your communications, it even know what you are ‘telling’ them, from where and what time you are saying it.

Extrapolate all this information to include other google products that businesses and website owners use, with Analytics, Adsense, Webmaster tools now add that to the acquisition of double-click, the worlds largest ad serving platform and you are left with a company that has enough of its code willingly placed on millions if not billions of websites, who can now track your every movement. This is an advertisers dream! to target you and I do mean YOU, with the right ad at the right time so they can influence your purchasing decision, if they don’t get you on one site, no worries they’ll get you on the next. If Google’s algorithms work out you’re not interested, don’t worry I’m pretty sure the next ad in the queue might tickle your fancy.

Google are not the only people in the game, but they are doing it extraordinarily well at it. Do I admire what they are doing? Have I willingly ‘bought’ (sold my data for use of their products) into Google? Do I hope they will show restraint on using the data which they have and continue to gather? Yes, yes and yes!

The advertising revolution is here, if you think contextual targeting through keywords was impressive, and you thought that behavioural targeting at ISP level was wrong, while retargeting is creepy, wait until you, your friends and everyone you know are simultaneously brought together in a marketers melting pot of dreams.