"The first thing that came out of our mouths when we heard that Google is working on a system that listens to what's on your TV playing in the background, and then serves you relevant adverts, was 'that's cool, but dangerous'," says Rethink Research Associates in a comment piece published on The Register. The story refers to this article
As someone pointed out on Slashdot, Ars Technica reported this idea back in June:
Developers from Google's research laboratory presented a paper (PDF) about interactive television applications that leverage ambient audio analysis at the Euro Interactive Television conference last week. The research paper, which describes a system for providing contextually relevant web content for television consumers, received the best paper award. The described system uses a computer microphone to analyze the audio being emitted by a television, and uses that data to determine what show the user is watching. The system can then provide the user with web content that relates to the show.
Comment: The next step is presumably to use your webcam to keep a record of which snacks you consume during different TV programmes. It's just another part of accumulating all the world's information in order to best serve all the world's advertising.... (Of course you agreed to this! Didn't you read to the end of the agreement you clicked when you installed Google Toolbar 8 in 2011?)
Google's eavesdropping idea doesn't sound too smart coming after the publicity about how it records your every search forever, but was, of course, published before that.
