Do means justify ends?

Google has given AdWords advertisers the ability to target ad buys by demographic, according to the official AdWords blog.

The demographic bidding feature was introduced in limited beta. Advertisers must run contextual- or placement-targeted ads to participate, or to bid on demo-delivered ads at all.

Demographic bidding is best used to target ads for social networking or other sites that collect large amounts of user data. The data is made anonymous to protect user privacy and reported to Google, which uses it to target ads.

Bidding can be adjusted via existing demographic conversion data, available in AdWords' reporting tools. The data enables advertisers to assess which demographic groups perform well.

Two months ago, AllFacebook revealed that Google accessed private user data on Facebook to augment AdWords, which violates Facebook's terms of service.

Google blamed the occurrence on a "data glitch" and had allegedly "fixed" the issue.