Say what you want about tracking cookies and retargeting techniques but this story has nothing to do with spam. They seem to have patented a way to server advertising to users across many social networks which could then expose those adds to friends and friends of friends of the user who first sees the ad. This isn't much different than all of your friends seeing that you have "liked" a page on facebook. Marketers bank on the hope that some of the people who see what you have just "liked" will follow the link and possibly connect with their page as well. It's voluntary and opt-in and pretty unobtrusive. I don't see what about this Google concept is different from that.

No they don't! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aol_subscribers_Q201-Q407.png

Instant? It's nearly three months since Win 7 was released and we're discussing hints of an SP1 here. By the time an actual SP1 is released it will be far from instant.

So you never dropped fifty cents for your local daily because of those adds too? And you're comparing a weekly to the instantaneous web? Good luck staying informed. At least you can stay up on tech news by not reading the articles posted here.

Nuclear POWERED, not nuclear ARMED. If you read the source and not the blog refering to the source you'd know this already. "Defense Department officials declined to speculate on which weapons might be aboard the two submarines." http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/world/05patrol.html

ANY plane becomes Air Force One when the president sets foot on board.

Why is the above modded insightful? Security Measures are now synonymous with laws? This has nothing to do with law.