long as it keeps our eco-system intact - where the user is still willing to answer the question, publishers are monetising their content and researchers are getting the information they need. But there are definitely question types that, if introduced, would cause the eco-system to fall apart. PM: It's also worth saying that the results and analysis interface is just as important to us as being able to serve the survey and get accurate responses back. We do all the analysis for users - we try to pull out the interesting nuggets of information that we call 'insights', the statistically-significant differences between sub-populations in the data. With things like open-ended responses, we need to ask: 'What does that mean in terms of the reporting interface?' Just showing the user a list of responses isn't really good enough for us and so we are trying to create new and innovative ways to understand that data without the user having to do a lot of the work. Questions have been asked about who owns the Google Consumer Survey data. Can you explain? PM: The person who pays for the data owns it and can do whatever they want with it. Google doesn't use it for any other purpose. But aren't there opportunities for Google to take all the behavioural data it already collects about web usage and tie that with the attitudinal data it gets from GCS? PM: It depends on what you mean. We already tie cookie data to the survey