Great point! Personal Information is already commoditized via Claritas and others, but people cant commoditized they own personal information to sell to companies.

That would be a very interesting paradigm shift - like people getting paid to wear t-shirts that say CK or purses that has the “Coach” logo all over them? Instead of paying more because of them.

Personalization can be a great tool, but obviously can get in the way sometimes. I’d like to see something like Amazon.com’s recommendation system, where they show you the “generic” results along with “Recommended Links”.

To Mike:

SEO will continue to evolve to something more complex for sure, but my question is: Are enough people using Google Accounts at this time to make Google Personalization matter?

I use Google search rapidly and also the Search history often. More of all I heavily use the Bookmarks & Personalized Home also. Google Reader is also in my usage list though limited. But they are all friendly and helpful.

I think we should care about it. If not there is infringement or leak of our personal/private preferences and other information, causing harm.

As a user though, I don’t like personalised search. I want to see what Google thinks is number one for a particular term, not what it thinks I’d like to see. I trust Google when it comes to evaluating website; not when it comes to evaluating ME.