excerpt: “DoubleClick, which has access to user behavior across huge portions of the Internet, could allow Google to create a still more precise picture of its users — and deliver still more targeted, and more expensive (but also more effective) advertising.
If the assumptions here are correct, then we’re looking at an attempt on Google’s part to create highly precise profiles of millions of people — and that’s a privacy dilemma.”
from: “Getting Comfortable with Less Privacy.” Mark Simon. Search Insider. June 4, 2007
[the author goes on to suggest that such data collection and targeted advertising will ultimately benefit users via a “better free Internet,” so the privacy trade-off is worth such profiling and collection]