Google Dashboard - see what data they’re keeping
Google are taking over the world! We’re entrusting our data with a faceless corporation!
Some people worry about that, anyway, though I’m not one of them. I think Google offer a great range of free services that greatly enhance my online life - even if sometimes I feel left out as a European.
Today Google announced on their blog a great new service that should help make people much more comfortable with using Google - Google Dashboard. This can also be found through your Google account settings. What it gives you is a single page summarizing all the Google products you use, and what is kept on them.
So, I can see how many conversations I have stored in my Gmail, how many albums in Picasa, what’s in my Google Docs and so on. It covers over 20 products, including the aforementioned, Calendar, Web History, Orkut, YouTube, Talk, Reader, Alerts, Latitude and more. From here you can control all of that data too.
Perhaps the data that’s most eye opening is your search history - searching while signed in is associated with your account, and it’s all there! There’s even a calendar that shows your levels of search activity. It’s fascinating, in a narcissistic way, but even better you are put in control of it all. If you want to delete it, that’s easy. You can delete bits, or everything and “pause” history collection.
I think this Google Dashboard really makes you feel in control of your online life, and I would love to see sites like Facebook and MySpace follow suit. Cynics and conspiracy theorists probably won’t be convinced, but it certainly takes some of the wind out of their sails.
*Apparently there are some issues with data collection for Google Apps for Domains.
Posted at 8:23 pm on Nov 7th
I’m running Firefox 3.5.4. Every time I try to use the Dashboard, or even access it for the first time, I get redirected to a page which says I must first clear my cookies. But the instructions for how to do that are invalid for Firefox 3.5.4. They are out dated, wrong, and the options to check are simply not there. I’m posting this warning because trying to let Google know about this problem is as effective as throwing a wet sock in their direction. Oh. And that also means your post about the dashboard is meaningless incompetant fluff.
Posted at 10:16 am on Nov 9th
Hi Tim,
I wrote this with 3.5.4, and had none of the problems you did. I also haven’t been able to find other complaints of the same nature.
Regardless, whether or not Dashboard worked on your computer doesn’t bear on the point I was making about Google and privacy!
Still, I like to be helpful even in the face of poor spelling, so here goes:
Clearing your cookies is dead simple, just open Tools - Clear Recent History. Click the Details button and you can check or uncheck the things you want to delete. To clear your cookies, leave them checked, and choose ‘everything’ from the time range drop down menu. You will then be cookie free.