海鸥行动:谁能帮忙翻译一下？

That is, Google and its rivals can sell the opportunity to put an ad in front of you that is tightly keyed to your detailed profile, and to what you’re doing at that moment. Did you watch a show about solar power on the Discovery Channel? Making a lot of trips to the auto-repair shop? Sounds like you’re a candidate for an ad for a hybrid car, to be routed to your cell phone or car when you’re within three blocks of a dealer. Google’s big innovation wasn’t making a better search engine—it was recognizing that tying information needs to ads on the fly was the missing link in the computer revolution.
Tailored, on-the-go information services are likely to prove irresistible to consumers—which is why all the big Web players are frantically retooling their business plans to provide them. Google has an early lead, but Yahoo, Microsoft and Time Warner’s AOL are rushing to put their own spins on the trend. In fact, almost every corner of the computer and communication industries—indeed, much of the business world—is giving serious thought to how to get in on the action. No wonder: Search-engine-driven advertising is already a $10 billion world market, expected to hit $30 billion in four years—and that’s without a new range of customized services. The potential take is no less than the $400 billion spent worldwide on advertising each year.
To pull off these sponsored services, Google, Yahoo and others need to know who you are; where you are; what you buy, watch and read; who you spend time with, and even what you say to your friends. No business wants to be caught spying on its customers, of cause; these companies plan to nudge and seduce us, literally bit by bit, into agreeing to let them gather the information advertisers need for tailored pitches. Forty-one percent of online users already visit Google at least once a week to run a search, but keywords are a limited source of ad customization, notes analyst Charlene Li at Forrester Research. “Google is desperate to sign people up to do more personal things,” she says.