Thomas56 - 6:23 pm on Jan 27, 2012 (gmt 0)

I used to use Firefox exclusively, then thought I should see how my pages look in Internet Explorer and was surprised at the difference in the Google ads.

If I went to a furniture page in Firefox a Google ad might show a supposedly local ad for concrete work in a town 120 miles away. In Internet Explorer the ad shown would be closer to relevance. I tried Opera and got the same close to relevance.

I don't use Chrome Google gets too much of my information already.

I don't think that interest based ads can possibly work unless Google is used exclusively and I rarely use Google search any more, because I can get better search results elsewhere.

A good example is a supermarket where I shop occasionally that has a club card, so they can keep track of what you buy. They used to send a monthly health report based on your purchases. I generally only buy meat there when they have a good buy and a few other small items. My health report would come back with fat way off the charts and an admonition to eat healthier. I eat healthy, but I buy the other stuff at a closer store.

It seems that's where Google is going, gathering an abundance of partial information to misinterpret a person's desires and handing out a lot of irrelevant information.