If you have ever stood in the sleet wondering where the nearest umbrella emporium is, then the ultimate Google obvious may fascination you.
The finding hulk has feel safe egghead rights to a network that would offer ads formed on environmental conditions.
Google mentioned forward-looking patents were utilitarian for its portfolio, but it had no stream skeleton to deed on it.
But privacy advocates have warned it could set a dangerous precedent.
The patent, initial reported by Personal Computer World publication , potentially paves the way for a mobile phone propitious with sensors that would enable it to record information such as temperature, humidity, light, and sound or air composition, that would trigger applicable adverts.
"Advertisements for air conditioners may be sent to users located at regions having temperatures on top of a initial threshold, whilst advertisements for winter overcoats may be sent to users located at regions having temperatures next a second threshold," explains the obvious document.
Gus Hosein, senior manager director of Privacy International, is not impressed.
"Not calm with pciking up immeasurable amounts of information from your online activities, it seems Google are seeking to beginning exploiting the offline space as well. Patents similar to this may never advance to fruition, but they force us to inquire ourselves: how many aspects of the lives will advertisers try to exploit, and where will it end?
"This is an endeavor to spin the gadgets in to personal espionage devices, only so a firm can try to sell you a cloak on a chilled day."
Google was interested to put the obvious in context.
"We record obvious applications on a accumulation of ideas that the employees advance up with. Some of those ideas after that developed in to actual products or services, a few don't. Prospective product announcements should not indispensably be unspoken from the obvious applications," mentioned a Google spokesman.
Patents are the new terrain for tech firms, and together with seeking to earn as many device-specific patents as possible, many are moreover camp forward-thinking ideas to future-proof themselves.
Andrew Alton, a obvious counsel with law firm Urquhart-Dykes and Lord, mentioned it was a judicious prolongation of Google's context advertising.
"There are elements of things from the movie Minority Report going on in the actual world but this is only an prolongation of context-based advertising. It is what Google does any way - mixing people's past story with finding results or searches formed on GPS location," he said.
He mentioned that such "blue sky patents" were apropos increasingly renouned with firms.
"Lodging patents on things you are already carrying out puts you at the back the times. To theory what will come about next, to step back and look at the next era of products that puts you in a widespread position," he said.
"If you outlay allowance on investigate and growth of new products, the expenses may be large but getting chartering rights when someone else invents it is giveaway allowance for firms," he added.
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