The Washington Post reports on a program created by Google that ties credit card transaction records to users' online activity to demonstrate whether its ads are prompting people to make purchases, even in brick-and-mortar retail outlets. Called by some in the ad industry as "the holy grail" of online advertising, the credit card data allows Google to tie real-world purchase records with online activity. The Electronic Privacy Information Center's Marc Rotenberg said, "What's really fascinating to me is that as the companies become increasingly intrusive in terms of their data collection, they also become more secretive." In a statement, Google said privacy has been a major consideration during the development of the program. "While we developed the concept for this product years ago, it required years of effort to develop a solution that could meet our stringent user privacy requirements," the company said. (Registration may be required to access this story.)
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