Google Dashboard reveals private data
Updated on 05 November 2009
Google Dashboard is unveiled revealing just how much information the internet giant stores about its users. Benjamin Cohen asks whether it raises privacy concerns.
Google has this morning unveiled the Google Dashboard, a simple way of immediately seeing all of the data the internet giant holds on you and allowing you to delete, if you wish.
For years, Google has been under pressure from privacy campaigners due to the huge amount of data the company has stored for many years about nearly every internet user in the world.
Today at the meeting of the European Union's privacy watchdog, the Article 29 working party conference in Madrid, Google will launch their new service that they hope will satisfy their critics that they really are benign when it comes to our data.
It is an attempt to ensure that Google is compliant with the concept that users give informed explicit consent to their use of their data. It will, I'm told, also placate some of the company's more vocal critics who say that Google is not upfront enough with the level of data recorded about users.
I have been a Google user for years and have had a Google mail account since it launched in 2004. This account, if logged in, not only stores details about my emails but also all the searches I make on Google, videos I watch on YouTube, the appointments in my calendar as well as many more in the 25 Google-owned services covered by the new dashboard.
When I was recently shown a preview of the Google Dashboard service I was genuinely shocked about the level of detail the company knows about my life.
The searches I've made over many years catalogue everything from the need to find a plumber, through medical questions, relationship advice, holidays, property hunting and even a bit of ego boosting searches for "Benjamin Cohen".
All of my search history together with sites I've visited are stored and easily navigated. The service allows you to see what you searched for on any given day many years ago, it's rather like reading your diary.
Of course it's not just about search, but all of the conversations I've had using Google. If I used Google's tracking service Latitude, it would tell me where I was on a particular day, it shows the blogs I've edited many years ago and the dummy records I created in Google Health a year or so ago. As an iGoogle user it also shows me the sites I've visited, the RSS feeds I've read, everything you could imagine.
It has been possible to see some of this information in the past but never before to view all Google data unified in one offering.
The point of Google showing all of this data is not really to scare us; it's to open our eyes to the data we willingly share with companies like them in exchange for useful free services. It also gives us the opportunity to delete the records we'd rather not have anyone knowing and even block Google from storing data about us entirely.
The inter-relation of all of the data that Google holds also provides a fascinating insight into the power of Google as a corporation. Its business model is all about data - be it the data that exists on websites around the world or the data that it holds about its customers.
It uses the details about our search queries and the sites we visit (or adverts we click on) to improve its algorythm. It uses the data on our search queries to serve relevant ads when we're using other Google services. If they know I'm searching for a plumber then it makes sense for adverts about plumbers to appear when I visit their other websites.
It helps me as a consumer but it also helps the advertiser reach me, and ultimately this means more revenue for Google.
