No. Google does not - in the humble opinion of this onetime privacy officer and industry gadfly. Surprised? Those of you who have heard me rant about online privacy invasions probably are surprised. But, there are two key elements to this and any privacy debate, and Google has clearly addressed both of them way, way up front - like six months before their hard launch.

Sometimes it is a delicate and dangerous dance we do together, the buyers of media and those that sell it.

Training is extremely important. Last week, I discussed my ideas on integration and I came to the conclusion that training is the fundamental means by which this will occur. Unfortunately I didn't go into detail on what type of training I think is appropriate, so let's take a moment to do so this week.

The ad serving customer support reps don't want to say it, because it will offend their clients. But if you were to take your customer support rep out after work for a few drinks and he loosened up a bit, he'd tell you to quit putting it off and come in for a training class.

On April first I was sitting at a board meeting with folks from a bunch of agencies and top sites. One guy came in and teased the AOL guy saying Google was introducing a free email service. We all laughed thinking it was an April fool's joke right away.

Remember way, way back, in 1999? Back in the day, all the best analyst groups were telling us about the superheating Web ad market, broadband penetration, and all manner of can't miss business models that somehow missed by a ton, and not so soon thereafter.

How many of you reading this column were working in the online advertising business in the late '90s? Do you remember the long hours and the hard work and the endless array of new problems needing solutions?

I was perusing the Spin Board over the weekend and I saw a lot of responses that dealt with the integration of traditional and interactive media, but overwhelmingly these responses were attacking the question from differing points of view. I was unable to come to a strong, concrete conclusion after reading these opinions, so I thought I would ask the basic question, "What is integration?"

Jeff runs a company that sells camping gear. Jeff has heard a handful of stories about small businesses that have been successful selling things on the Web, and he wants his business to have similar success, so Jeff calls an agency. He doesn't have a clue where to start, but he thinks he needs to tell the whole world about his online store that sells camping gear. So when he calls an agency, he tells them two things:

We've all been talking about CAN-SPAM on the Spin board, at cocktail parties, and at industry events. Just when you think it can't get any worse... it seems our loathed spam has a nastier offspring called spim.