Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Already United…

… in hating New York State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky.

Brodsky, a Democrat representing a Westchester County District, is sponsoring a bill that would limit the ability of companies to collect information for targeted advertising. Joining Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft in opposing the bill are AOL, Comcast, eBay, EDS, and Facebook.

Jim Halpert, general counsel for the State Privacy and Security Coalition, claims that the bill "is unnecessary, most likely unconstitutional, and would have profound implications for the future of Internet advertising and the availability of free content on the Internet."

Aha! We have a winner! There's a key point in there: it would jeopardize the availability of free content on the Internet. You are certainly right, Mr. Halpert, and even worse, the bill would require companies to alert their users to what's likely been going on without their awareness for quite some time.

I've been watching the discussion of how and why so much is free online, and slowly realizing that there is a disconnect in most users' thought process when it comes to free software and services. There seems to be a collective amnesia when it comes to realizing that nothing can truly be free, because it has to be paid for somewhere. If ad revenue is dropping and users aren't willing to pay for these free services, there's really only one other way to monetize, and that's selling out the users' data. For marketers, user data is a goldmine, worth far more than the blanketing of sites with a certain demographic with ads tailored to that demographic.

Compared to ad systems like Phorm, Facebook's Beacon will seem like the most privacy-friendly ad system in the world. The UK is already looking at the legality of Phorm as well as protecting user IP addresses as private data. At some point, users are going to have to figure out which way they'd rather pay for their cool web apps; with their cash or their privacy. And for once, New York is on the right side of the issue, making sure that users know they are making a choice.