Sometimes but not usually it's the retailer who initiates the stalking.

If you look closely, you'll find most big online advertising companies are using a few, but very similar principles. Google, Yahoo: it's how they make money, however usually through a daughter company to hide the link. It's the traditional approach to targeted advertising.

What happens is that an ad which is delivered to your computer at a product or search page will have a javascript or an image embedded of 0x0 pixels by the ad server. They call these beacon pixels and they allow ads from the ad server to track you for a certain interest (i.e. beacon). Other times the retailer will embed beacon pixels on their product pages directly, but that is not a requirement.

It becomes evil when sites like Facebook get involved, here the idea is they can read your beacons and spread them to your friends on the basis that they might want to buy the product they saw you buy. Not to mention the opportunity to enrich the beacons with target demographics like sex, age, location, etc...

This type of advertising is done on the principle that people who buy something will often buy similar things, accessories, or at the least that their friends will.

It is of course very backwards but just like spam, those few people who actually buy after being prompted with these ads make it all worth while. (And that doesn't mean click on the link but buy something from that site/brand within a few days or weeks.)

Fortunately, AdBlock and similar options do a very good job of blocking that content. Unfortunately some ad revenue based companies have become smart enough to break their usability if the code sent by the ad tracking is missing. So sometimes you will need a "GreaseMonkey" to get around that but it can be done.

In my experience: Even a college degree is no assurance someone is capable of doing a certain job. I've seen MSc. CS graduates who barely knew how to write a piece of code to give me the average of two numbers. Or how to translate some of what they learned into practicality. I've also seen graduates who were able to perform some mind bending feats.

The catch is: I've found there are at least an equal amount of CS pro's out there without degrees who can do either as well as the person with the degree. Also in my experience: the best people keep learning new tech/languages all the time and their accomplishments speak for themselves.

Make sure your resume paints a compelling picture so you get a foot in the door and then show people how good you are. If the company is going to be a good place to work they've probably learned to source and interview properly. Make your accomplishments speak for you.

What a load of FUD!

- Google isn't charging for access.
- Universities do charge for access (or membership).
- Why wouldn't libraries find their own copies of orphaned books and include them in their catalog?

What is really in danger here is the university library business model: charge a premium for things that should be open to the public.

Far too many establishments seek to control access to information / and thus knowledge. I for one hope Google scans as many books/papers as possible. At least we'd be able to find them.