So, I want to be clear that I’m not bashing Google with this question I’m about to pose.  I’m trying to gauge if my reaction borders on paranoia, or if it’s justified.

Here’s the situation.  On Wednesday I was on GoogleChat with a friend who talked about watching the movie "The Big Lebowski" with friends that night.  The next day, Thursday, just about exactly 24 hours later, ads for Big Lebowski T-Shirts showed up in my Google Mail.

To be clear, I am not anti AdSense.  I think it’s great.  Contextual advertising is an amazing advancement.  And I am also not naive.  I know that IM’s do not dissolve into the vapor. I understand that anything I ever put in an IM (or SMS for that matter) is archived forever on someone’s server, poised and ready to ruin any chance I ever had at getting elected to public office.    

But here is my issue, and again, I am asking you if I am over-reacting.  If the ad for Big Lebowski T-Shirts had showed up while we were talking about Big Lebowski, I wouldn’t have blinked.  Even if it showed up in the next hour.  But a full day later hints to me that they have some sort of psychology behind these ads, that they are using some sort of AI to read and analyze everything I type in a day, run it through an algorithm, and shoot me marketing messages that will trigger some sort of recall mechanism from the day before.  I can’t explain why, but that weirds me out.

I know, it’s not enitirely rational.  But something about it doesn’t quite sit right with me.  I guess I feel it starts to open a Pandora’s box.  Sending me a Mariners Ticketmaster ad if I am reading an email about baseball from a Seattle IP Address is one thing.  But building a complete profile about me, keeping track of everything I google, everything I write, everything I receive, and every ad I click on, then throwing specific ads that attempt to predict my behavior or trigger responses….well that borders on invasive.  

Anyway, I’m looking forward to hearing your own thoughts on this.