They may be right about their users' behavior.
Executives promised more social features from Google, particularly using cues from its users' behavior to personalize their results.
It is not part of those networks, however, and Times Company Digital says it does not share data about individual users' behavior).
The predictive analytics firm helps to generate custom advertisements and will tailor Twitter users' ads to match up more closely with those users' behavior online.
The coalition's recommendations do not address other important Internet privacy issues that involve the ability of private companies to monitor and record their users' behavior.
The sharing-economy companies often describe themselves as platforms whose users even those who provide services don't count as employees, suggesting that this limits the companies' responsibility for their users' behavior.
(The flagship America Online service has strict limits on how it can use information on its users' behavior. AOL's other divisions, like the Netscape.com Web site, have somewhat looser privacy policies).
It seeks to bottle the analytical smarts on which Google and Yahoo rely to understand their users' behavior and sell the product to large corporations dealing with torrents of data.
The problem, Dr. Etzioni and others say, is that the available options — establishing a national identity database, tracking users' behavior or knowing the data on a person's phone that might suggest an age group — are considered violations of privacy.
The sharing-economy companies often describe themselves as platforms whose users — even those who provide services — don't count as employees, suggesting that this limits the companies' responsibility for their users' behavior.
Few commercial apps have actually been shown to help change users' behavior, improve their health, or even take accurate measurements.
