Marketing Pilgrim

Just what Google needs right now: a way to look even more invasive. Privacy concerns for the Internet and Google in particular have skyrocketed this year, as Buzz has prompted privacy concerns since the day it rolled out. But the trend goes further back with Google Street View.

Although that service blurs the images of passersby and license plates (and will remove images on request), Google is thinking about going to the opposite extreme soon: facial recognition technology, the Financial Times reports.

Oh great.

FT points out that Google already uses the technology in Picasa, so it certainly has the capacity to expand the service. (They chose not to include it in Google Goggles, though.) CEO Eric Schmidt said:

In the European Union, it’s illegal to track consumers online with cookies without their consent (though the opt in/out question is still in the air). A recent study looked at what effect this regulation has had on purchase intent and, therefore, online ad effectiveness—and the results aren’t so pretty.

Looking at 3M+ Internet users and nearly 10,000 campaigns over 8 years, researchers asked users if they’d seen the ad and if they’d intended to purchase the product. They then compared the purchase intent based on the responses before and after the EU introduced its behavioral targeting regulations, as well as non-EU users’ purchase intent. MediaPost reports the results:

In an indication that the market is not where people would like it to be, ReachLocal cut the price of its IPO yesterday to below the midpoint of the range for the offering.

Reuters tells us

Internet marketing company ReachLocal Inc (RLOC.O) priced shares in its initial public offering 28 percent below the midpoint of the expected range on Wednesday, according to an underwriter.

The company, based in Woodland Hills, California, sold 4.17 million shares for $13 each, raising about $54.17 million. It had planned to sell shares for $17 to $19 each.

ReachLocal sells services to maximize the effectiveness of online advertising by small and medium businesses.

The initial filing from December of last year had ReachLocal looking to raise about $100 million.

We have all heard of Baidu and the hold that the Chinese search engine has on one of the largest potential markets in the world. Google’s Chinese experience has probably done more to advance Baidu than Google itself. Well, it’s a big world out there with another large market opportunity for search in Russia and the former Soviet states that end in ‘stan’. Whether Google will have trouble there is yet to be seen but there are developments on the search front from that part of the world as Russian search engine Yandex announces its global launch.

SearchEngineLand reports

In its announcement (Russian language), Yandex calls this an “alpha service” and the “beginning of a long journey.” In this English-language news release, the company says it’s been indexing foreign web sites and adding the content to its search engine for the past two years.

Seems like Mark Zuckerberg is experiencing a serious dose of ‘when it rains, it pours’ these days. The scrutiny that he and the Facebook bunch is facing for their privacy concerns has become a true thorn in the side of the biggest social networking player on the planet. Many have said that it is unfair to continually put Zuckerberg in the cross hairs but reports of movies being made and more of late has put him in a less than flattering light. I see it as the price of fame and fortune in a world gone silly over any kind of celebrity but that’s just my take.

Although Apple’s conveniently doing all it can to tout iAds, Google may still be facing an inquiry from the FTC as the search giant looks to buy its way into the mobile advertising market. Google announced its acquisition of AdMob six months ago, but it looks like the regulatory committee has its sights on Google as final approval has not been forthcoming.

But Google’s not about to give up. The $750M (in stock) acquisition is that important to the company—or perhaps it’s the reported $700M kill fee built into the agreement, the amount Google will have to pay if the deal doesn’t go through.

Yeah, I’d spring for the mobile advertising company for the extra $50M, too.