Long before the privacy debate erupted in its current form, Google has had a fairly simple straight forward tool called Ad Preferences Manager, which allows users to adjust the types of ads that Google serves them by changing the preferences stored in Google's tracking cookie. Unfortunately, most people have no clue what the Ad Preferences Manager is or what it means to them, and Google has done little to change this fact until recently. The fact that Google has not done more to gradually educate its millions of users on the positive aspects of controlling the ads that they see online represents a serious missed opportunity to shift the privacy debate away from "tracking" users online and towards empowering web users to take control of the ads that they see. More >>