The web is more than search. There are social networks, ecommerce, entertainment and plain nonsense. If you will count the number of web searches, page views and the corresponding ads as a result of those actions, that will translate to around 336 billion actions in a month based on data from five of the biggest web operations – Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, AOL and MySpace – according to a report from NYTimes.com. These companies are getting better and better in terms of tracking online behavior to deliver ads. In essence, advertising is what powers the world wide web.

Just consider this: Yahoo! is collecting data from each user, on average, from 811 points of interest or data points in a month. Roughly speaking, that is more or less 811 ways of extracting data from you based on your online behavior per month!

NYTimes adds that it’s no wonder why AOL is talking with Yahoo about a merger and Microsoft is willing to pay more than $41.2 billion to acquire the company.

Some are not in favor of tracking our online behavior. But ads is the only major way to monetize our free web searches.

More on the author’s article here.