The Wall Street Journal has published the latest in its series of articles designed to freak out people who haven't been paying attention to advertising practices in the past ten years.

The series is about "what they know about you" (or something like that) and covers cookies, targeting, tracking, etc.

In the latest installment, WSJ reporter Jessica Vascellaro describes an internal document by a DoubleClick executive that was designed to help Google get into the display ad tracking and targeting game. There doesn't seem to have been much of interest in the document (at least nothing that the article mentioned), but Jessica observes that Google's thinking on cookie-based targeting evolved considerably over the years--from "nfw" to "well, everyone else is doing it, so we will, too."

Jessica also includes this interesting anecdote about an argument between Larry and Sergey, the latter of whom apparently took more persuading:

By late 2008, Google executives were preparing to launch ads targeted at users' interests. But the specifics still remained controversial.

Tensions erupted during a meeting with about a dozen executives at Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters about 18 months ago when Messrs. Page and Brin shouted at each other over how aggressively Google should move into targeting, according to a person who had knowledge of the meeting. "It was awkward," this person said. "It was like watching your parents fight."

Mr. Brin was more reluctant than Mr. Page, this person said. Eventually, he acquiesced and plans for Google to sell ads targeted to people's interests went ahead.

Google launched the new advertising product, "interest-based ads" in March 2009. The service, currently available only to a limited group of advertisers, uses cookies to track any time a user visits one of the more than one million sites where Google sells ads.