Google and Dynamic Pricing: Patenting Your Propensity to Overpay

This 'dont be evil' thing turns out to be, well, pretty open to interpretation.

Lots of people overpay. Or feel that they do. Buyer's remorse is a common emotion. But it turns out that the propensity to overpay can be identified, managed and even predicted. To the point where Google has patented a means of doing so.

In our current socio-economic state, living by the Golden Rule about doing unto others or being your brother's keeper are about as popular as submitting to the dentist's drill without novocaine. We dont appear to have a lot of sympathy for anyone else. Could be due to our straitened economic circumstances. Or maybe a couple of generations of prosperity have just coarsened us. Whatever the reason, taking advantage of others appears to be considered a fair part of the bargain between buyer and seller.

This is particularly interesting in the internet context: Nigerian investment scams, Chinese IPOs and American political promises all vie for the consumers' attention. But actually patenting ways in which people can be targeted to overpay seems a mite predatory, even by today's morally flexible standards.

The advantage the net has had over tangible, retail commerce is its transparency, convenience and generally lower costs. They are mutually supportive and deeply interwoven. As soon as it is perceived that one of them has been undermined, the others may soon follow. JL

Timothy reports at SlashDot:

A newly-granted Google patent on Dynamic Pricing of Electronic Content describes how information gleaned from your search history and social networking activity can be used against you by providing tell-tale clues for your propensity to pay jacked-up prices to 'reconsume' electronic content, such as 'watching a video recording, reading an electronic book, playing a game, or listening to an audio recording.' The patent is illustrated with drawings showing how some individuals can be convinced to pay 4x what others will be charged for the same item. From the patent: 'According to one innovative aspect of the subject matter described by this specification, a system may use this information to tailor the price that is offered to the particular user to repurchase the particular item of electronic content. By not applying discounts for users that may, in relation to a typical user, be more inclined to repurchase a particular product, profits may increase.'

Hey, wasn't this kind of dynamic pricing once considered evil?"