Fears of Big Brother aside, I wonder if this new dimension to search will make marketers happy or sad. In one respect, I can understand how some might see this as bad news. Those who work hard at SEO will have a hard time quantifying search engine positions on their targeted key phrases. I wonder how the folks at Guinness World Records will feel when their powerful number one position for "records" becomes less valuable because it's no longer number one for everyone.

I empathize with the struggle that marketers face as they adapt to new technologies. I understand how advertisers are not too fond of innovations like TiVo because it allows me to skip through their ads. But in the end, when it comes to these complaints I say - as I do to my kids when they don't want to eat their peas - "too bad, how sad."

I feel it's very short sighted for marketers to complain about technological changes. After all, in the end technology only improves marketing for everyone. True, TV ads now have less reach and therefore less value because of TiVo. But consider the vision of marketing convergence that John Battelle describes in his book The Search - How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed our Culture. In his book he describes a possible future in which a service like TiVo and a search engine like Google could interact to deliver highly targeted marketing information and compelling offers. His example is of a soon-to-be mother and father searching for information on baby strollers on Google. They also set their TiVo prefs for shows about birth and child care. As they sit down to watch a show one evening, a few ads - not unlike Google AdWords - appear on their TiVo start page. Rather than these ads being for high end sports cars or banal new comedies the ads are for baby food and - what do you know - strollers. Not only are the ads relevant, but, because the manufacture did not have to dump millions into a broadcast ad campaign, they include significant discounts to highly qualified prospects. Win - win. The product manufacturer gets a low-cost, highly targeted marketing channel, and the consumer gets a great deal on a product they were looking to buy.

I don't know about you, but I would trade 100 or so irrelevant spam emails for a couple of discount offers on gadgets I am looking to buy. From a business perspective this is great news too. Would you trade a million unqualified TV viewers with no intent to purchase for a few thousand highly qualified, interested, and actively seeking consumers at a fraction of the cost of a national television campaign? You bet. With such refined marketing channels, companies will not have to waste the time of millions uninterested consumers or waste the dollars it takes to get the time-wasting message to them in the first place. As a consumer I will get helpful marketing information and offers for products I may really want from companies I may have never heard of, and they will find me when I'm ready to buy. That's improvement.

Two things have to happen to make all this work. One, as a consumer, I have to be willing to let the technology and marketing world track my personal preferences so they can develop an accurate profile of me. And two, marketers need to stop complaining about change and recognize the potential power available to them through the internet, search, and other innovations like TiVo.

Because these two conditions are still in process, the future is still future. But for some, the future really is today. Google has targeted AdWords and personalized search today. TiVo keeps track of my viewing habits and delivers programming it thinks I'll like today. Credit Card companies keep track of consumer buying data today. Connect a few of these data sources together and presto! You get less junk mail, less spam, and more appropriate information and mutually beneficial offers.

I'm sure that, as you've read this newsletter, you've had underlying thoughts concerning the protection of privacy, and that is a big objection and potential barrier. Certainly policy, politics, technology and law have a lot of work to do to make such systems function safely. But as for personal search, I look forward to the discoveries I'll make that I miss today because Google doesn't know me very well. When it does get to know me, irrelevant links will drop out to make room for the information I do care about. And that's a good thing.