Google Expands User Targeting & Data Collection in China: Human Rights & Privacy Issues Should be Raised

Google has been expanding its China online advertising business through its DoubleClick data targeting division, according to a report published by the Beijing-based "The Economic Observer."  The new story explains that "Google has passed the annual inspection as an Internet Content Provider in China," and is based on comments made by Liu Yun, a Google executive there.  The article underscores why more should be done to press Google to explain what it's done in China since the "hacking" incident last year.  There are also critical human rights issues that should be raised, given the work Google does in the collecting and selling of detailed user profiles used for digital advertising.  Here's an excerpt from the story:

China's online advertising market has lots of room to grow and is experiencing explosive growth, there's no reason why Google shouldn't earn a larger slice of market. Liu thinks it will give Google the opportunity to gain a vital position in the market, perhaps even a leading position that surpasses search advertising.
 Google would dismiss the idea that it intends to "return" to China. Liu claims that Google never actually left... "In the past year, Google China has made solid progress in certain areas while keeping a low profile," he said. "The quantity of display ads run by Google China's top 50 advertisers doubled in 2010. Ninety-seven percent of the largest 100 advertisers have embraced display ad campaigns. Google's China revenue is growing on a quarterly basis."
 
 Liu also believes that the market scale of display advertising will amount to 200 billion dollars in the following two or three years with higher potential than search. The range of formats of display ads on which he's basing his optimism includes text, mobile, rich media and video. One of the facts that makes his case is that Google's display network is reaching 96% of Chinese Internet users and providing 6 billion ad impressions each day with over 100,000 partners...[Doubleclick] enables advertisers to bid for ad space in real-time on an impression-by-impression basis, so they can deliver the right display ad at the right time at the right price.