Rockstar Consortium US LP et al v. Google Inc

Filing 18

MOTION to Change Venue by Google Inc. (Attachments: # 1 Text of Proposed Order Google Inc's Motion to Transfer Venue, # 2 Index, # 3 Declaration of Abeer Dubey, # 4 Declaration of Sam Stake, # 5 Exhibit 1, # 6 Exhibit 2, # 7 Exhibit 3, # 8 Exhibit 4, # 9 Exhibit 5, # 10 Exhibit 6, # 11 Exhibit 7, # 12 Exhibit 8, # 13 Exhibit 9, # 14 Exhibit 10, # 15 Exhibit 11, # 16 Exhibit 12, # 17 Exhibit 13, # 18 Exhibit 14, # 19 Exhibit 15, # 20 Exhibit 16, # 21 Exhibit 17, # 22 Exhibit 18, # 23 Exhibit 19, # 24 Exhibit 20, # 25 Exhibit 21, # 26 Exhibit 22, # 27 Exhibit 23, # 28 Exhibit 24)(Mann, James)

EXHIBIT 7

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8396177.html

BOSTON.COMMENT Today's topic Shadow
advertising
The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)
November 14, 1996



Permalink

Would you call it progress when advertisements start following you around like your own
shadow? That's what's happening on the Web now, as advertisers seek to target users
they believe are most likely to click into their site.
While targeted advertising is nothing new -- you're likely to get copies of the Sharper
Image catalog as a consequence of subscribing to GQ, for instance -- the powerful
technology of the Internet can take narrowly focused ads to alarming new levels.
Try this experiment: go to Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) and enter in the search term, sex.
On the results page, you'll see a banner ad at the top for "Amateur Hardcore, The Net's
only XXXsearch engine." Yahoo has taken the liberty of identifying you as a dirty
trenchcoat type, and served up an ad aimed at your kind. What if you're a legitimate
researcher looking for information about the Kinsey Report? Well, you'd be lumped in
with the other lascivious lurkers. This kind of banner targeting, based on a
user's search criteria, is relatively innocuous. But many Web sites are beginning to
build sophisticated databases of information about user demographics and preferences,
which can be used to deliver dead-on ads. Microsoft's customized Start page
(www.msn.com), for example, asks that you tell it where you live so that it can deliver
daily weather reports relevant to you. A site like Firefly (www.ffly .com), which builds a
detailed profile of your tastes in music and movies, can pitch even more accurate
marketing messages at you. Firefly offers advertisers, a movie studio, for example, the
opportunity to deliver an ad plugging a new Bruce Willis movie only to users who have
rated previous Bruce Willis movies highly. None of Firefly's advertisers has elected to
make such specific ad buys, presumably because when you cut Firefly's large audience
into such small pieces, you wind up with very small numbers. And advertisers just
beginning to dip their toes in the Internet are still thinking in terms of the mass media's
cost per thousand models: How much are we paying to reach a thousand potential
customers? Firefly's concept, which nearly amounts to selling incredibly qualified
individual users by the handful, may take a while to catch on. Advertisers haven't yet
grasped the value of targeting so precisely, simply because it hasn't been a possibility in
any other medium. But just as advertisers have grown more savvy about the use of direct
mail -- remember the envelope you got that looked just like your phone bill? -- it won't

take them long to learn the ropes of Web marketing. Imagine the on-line clothing catalog
that uses a tracking technology called `cookies' to remember what you tend to buy
(shoes), and then subtly offers you a discount on a related item (socks). What about
Microsoft taking advantage of the hidden information your browser sends over the Web
whenever you ask for a page? Microsoft can peek into this data -- which is sent whether
you want to send it or not -- and see you're still using Windows 3.1. Of course, then
they'd try to peddle a copy of Windows 95. Shadow advertising, which tracks you down
and sticks with you whether you've asked for it or not, is destined to increase on the Web
as the technology improves and as major advertisers gain a better understanding of the
medium. But will it serve you, making purchase decisions easier and cutting through a
lot of irrelevant marketing noise, or will it breach your privacy? Join the online debate at
www.boston.com, keyword: comment.