I wish tech companies knew more about me

Google’s personalization systems are failing to learn basic user preferences, according to a first-person account that cites repeated mismatches between a Helsinki-based user’s behavior and the ads, language settings and recommendations served to them. The user, logged into Chrome and Google services with English settings, was shown a Finnish-language help page after clicking an AI-generated search response, and continues to receive ads for products they already bought, including a purple gamepad. Spotify and YouTube Music have not detected that the user skips every electronic track with vocals despite years of that behavior, while a search for installation instructions for a specific AEG CCS84751 oven produced a homepage filled with unrelated oven and stove videos. The account also flags ads for a smart home system that does not deliver to Finland, industrial 3D-printing resin for a user with no 3D printer, and a Helsinki hotel the user has not searched for since 2014. The complaints matter because they undercut the industry’s core pitch that vast data collection yields superior personalization, and suggest that even the largest platforms struggle with simple signals such as locale, purchase history and explicit skips. What to watch next is whether Google and streaming services tighten context-aware targeting and language handling, or continue ceding ground to users who see the surveillance economy as more invasive than useful.