[ajkohn]

I agree. If there really is this desire, then Google needs to honor it.

The Ads Preference manager is fairly straight-forward (www.google.com/ads/preferences) and more people who go there change settings rather than opt-out.

The full opt-out instructions (http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&a...) are a bit tougher. Should they make it easier to do this? Maybe.

But if you make it too easy, you get false positives and then people may become upset that Google isn't as useful as it once was not fully understanding that it was their own preference to do so, right?

[jacquesm]

See, that is exactly what I meant. That's not a 'full opt-out', that is just an opt out from having your search results personalized.

Tracking will merrily continue.

And if you fall for that what do you think the general public will do?

[ajkohn]

Well, using both the links above (though I botched the first link to ad preferences) you can opt-out of the the remarketing/display cookie and the search cookie.

For those that get to the Ad Preferences page the stats are pretty interesting.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/clarifying-valleywag-comments/

The general public when presented with this doesn't seem to have such a drastic reaction.