the next step:ads that keep our privacy

In today's world , giant servers gather tons of personal information about us. This help finance the services we use in the web , by precisely targeted advertisements. This also create a huge privacy challenge.

Could there be another way , that offers both precise targeting , and personalization , and high level of privacy ?

Is it technically possible to build a web browser that learns all that he can about us, use the knowledge to enable personalized content and ads , while giving us more privacy than we have today ?

After searching a bit , i found that research has been done on this subject, for example see: Not All Adware Is Badware: Towards Privacy-Aware Advertising , and at least according to the research it seems possible.

Yes , it might be less effective than google but still , privacy is quite an important feature.

Now let's combine this technology with firefox , and the ADblock extension.
Suddenly, he who controls the browser , controls the advertising network.

Is this the real reason google is building chrome ?

Newspapers bearing plugins

Newspapers are in tough spot. Trying to profit from a commodity , on the internet of all places.

They should focus on monetizing their brand and their community.

Maybe offering browser plugins to their community could help here ?

Here's an idea for a plugin: Show users that are in the process of buying something trusted , highly relevant and highly useful information.

Maybe when I'm looking for car rental company , they should tell me about ZipCar , with it's new can rental business model that could save me bundles ?

Or when I'm trying to buy a fancy dress, tell me about the new company that rents fancy dresses?

They already told us stories about these companies, they just need to offer them at the right time, because there's a big chance I don’t know about these companies and their unique solutions, and so i don't look for them. or maybe i forgot.

Doing just that , they'll suddenly offer much more value.

And I bet they can find ways to monetize this value.