Google potentially has every search you have made, every email you sent and received, and every You Tube video you have watched, and every phone call you have made, most sites you have visited, and knows which adds you have already clicked on. Over months to years, heck they know which addresses you have gotten directions to. Finding ways to use that information is hard, but it's a lot wider than what is this search.
Amazon might have a lot of information about some of their customers, but Google has an insane amount of information about some of their customers. Which is more useful across the total web is a several billion dollar question. But I don't think Amazon can scale advertising information into that level yet.
My search data is likely to be spread around huge numbers of IPs. I'm rarely logged into google. Plus they really have no way of knowing whether I "converted" once I leave the search results. I may open tabs for the top 10 results, but it doesn't mean that I like what I've found, or that I would want to be presented with that kind of information again.
My amazon account, on the other hand, has been tied to me for at least 7 years, and likely has every search I've done, every product I've viewed, and everything I did up to and including eventually making a purchase.
I've gotta say, based on my own experience as a reasonably typical internet user, Amazon probably have less data on me, but it's bound to be better-quality.
Google uses cookies so the IP issue is meaningless. They also track what advertizing people click on...
However, I suspect you and I are not really the target market. I use Amazon and don't use Gmail but a large number of people spend a lot of time online looking at content hosted by Google, or including Google advertisements.
PS: Amazon might know which books, and electronics I like, but Google knows which car I have and when I am looking to buy the next one.
By "spread across IPs", I meant "from different physical computers", rather than the sorts of dynamic IP behaviour from a single host that can, as you say, be overcome through the use of cookies for tracking.
And how does Google know what kind of car you have? It knows what kind of car you might have been looking for information on, but that could have been because you were looking to buy one (and decided not to), or because you were helping a friend change the spark plugs. The data is considerably less rich when it's just search data without any ability to track conversions.
That said, I didn't actually think about Google Analytics when I originally replied. That is likely to be a source of data that is as good as Amazon's, if not better. Search-derived data on its own is of limited value.
It's not about a single piece of information. It takes one login before a new PC's history is linked to every other PC you have used and logged in from. Ok, linking to whichever account you use the most from that PC.
In the same way, Searching for an "Acura TSX pricing" in 07 says little. But, if you then search for "07 Acura TSX Owner’s Manual" in 09 you probably bought that car. I don't think Google algorithms are smart enough to say "bugatti veyron videos" relates to a desire for a faster car not the ownership of said car, but who knows. Google has focused on mining data for a long time and are fairly good at it by now. Search over time can say a lot, search for diapers in 00 and “toy’s for 5 year olds”, and you might have a kid born around 00 or are at least interested in buying stuff a child that age.
A lot of this is probabilities, thinking there is an 80% chance I have a 07 Acura TSX is a lot better than guessing I probably have a car. AKA showing me advertizing for a low end BMW is probably not a waste relative to the average user.
I usually don't login to google, hence my original assertion.
I've not seen any evidence that Google actually do any analysis that is quite that smart. My best guess is that they just do keyword analysis. This is something of an educated guess, because I know someone who worked on keyword extraction at Google.
Even if Google _could_ extract that kind of rich data you describe, I very much doubt they have done it to the point where it is in a format that is suitable for providing targeted ads (beyond what they already do, which as I said, I would guess is keyword-based).
The difference with something like Amazon's data or Google Analytics is that it is structured data that is already perfect for providing recommendations and targeted ads.
Amazon might have a lot of information about some of their customers, but Google has an insane amount of information about some of their customers. Which is more useful across the total web is a several billion dollar question. But I don't think Amazon can scale advertising information into that level yet.