Microsoft gets chided over internet user research

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) has seen increased attention into the user information collection and storage it is performing on all those billions of web searches -- nothing new there. Now, however, Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) is under the gun as well. The "Reporters without Borders" advocacy group has warned that the user profiling data collected specifically by Microsoft could eventually lead to tools that would allow regimes to identify dissidents. This is similar to what has gotten Yahoo! in very hot water in recent years.

Four Microsoft researchers meeting at the International World Wide Web Conference last month were able to correctly identify the gender and age of a web surfer 80% and 60% (respectively) of the time based on new algorithms that can predict user statistics based on websites that are visited. Although the researchers stated that customers could see better and more personalized web applications and more relevant advertising, some think this level of detail could be easily used against web surfers for the unintended benefits of others (like oppressive governments).

Sounding familiar? Microsoft is facing the same level of scrutiny that Google and Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) have faced. The battle here is for these three companies to make the interaction experience with each customer as enticing and relevant as possible (which requires the collection of some very personal web habit data) without giving too much knowledge away that could land in the hands of those who should not have it. A spokesperson for Reporters without Borders also said that "the technologies Microsoft is working on would allow it to gather information about Internet users without their knowledge."