Google tracking my history

Well, Google History is quite a relief for me as it enables me to follow on Gordon Bell’s footsteps even without having much resources at my disposal.

And I’m not quite so worried as my data is not trapped in Google. I have found out ways to extract data back from Google, which I intend to use for some research.

Read more about this here: http://semanticvoid.com/lifelogger/

Re: the baby industry — it can kick in earlier than birth if you buy or register something. So, if you sign up on any parenting sites, you’ll start getting some stuff. But yes, most companies wait until after they know the baby was born.

Yep, I noticed that yesterday too and decided to stop Google from logging my search history by disabling the corresponding setting.

Due to many security flaws on various Google domains it’s simply too easy for an attacker to read all that stuff. Scary indeed.

Why complain that marketing has failed to bombard you with an endless barrage of crap?

I think Google history is absolutely fantastic. Often, when I am trying to revisit a site, I visited in the dim and distant past, I can recall the loose search terms I used to find it but not the exact URL.

And, no, I don’t give two hoots if my wife can discover I searched for ‘elephant sex venues Stockholm free entry’ in May 2004 as she happens shares my offbeat interests. She is a 3 year old elephant, funnily enough.

Robert – Nail hit well and truly on the head!

In my post here:

…i too wondered where the hell any ads were.

My searches prove to Google what I have been interested in several things which would be PURRRFECT for advertisers.

Hell, Google may even be able to charge more for these ads because at least the history has some sort of evidence of search interest in it.

Scoble said: “What do you think about Google History? Does it make you think differently of Google? Why?”

Before that, Scoble said: “I *turned on* Google History.” [Emphasis is mine.]

Therein lies the Google Difference. I’m almost always comfortable signing up for a new Google service because they tend to make a point of:

- requiring explicit opt-in for any data storage service

- allowing you to export your data from the Google and take it elsewhere (Reader, Gmail, etc.)

- allowing you to remove your data (1) (Gmail, History, Browser Sync, etc.).

Despite any imperfections in their removal implementation, the “remove my stuff” option is a welcome and comforting gesture on behalf of a company that could just as easily say “We’re building the best web services around at the moment, and people will use them whether we offer these options or not.” Same applies to the opt-in policy for services such as History.

(1) I know, I know: Clicking the “remove” button doesn’t instantly purge your data from Google droids the world over–it might take time before it’s gone for good, or some remnant might linger someplace for eternity. No way around that. If you don’t like it, maybe try writing things down on paper and keeping them in a very large, armored box.

Yeah, just give me access to that data for a week, and maybe five high power servers, and we’ll have one hell of a StatBot post.

I think the userbase of Twitter is still early adopter and not a market big enough for P&G to consider.

Google history is frightening but quite pleased with the personalized search results..

About twitter, do you really think Twitter has the scale of users to really make an impact… it does make a good data source for getting trends though… but i think Google search trends or their zeitgeist is the better place to gather trends.. and they classify that with regions too..

Me too, when I’ve activated Google Web History yesterday, expected Google to START tracking. But it was already all there since January 2006!

Colin, from acorns grow great big trees and twitter is one hell of an acorn!

The ebiquity snapshot of 35k users online (at any one time rather than the total aggregate users I believe) is more than enough for anyone to seed something useful.

An interesting relationship to establish would be how many twitter posts/topics end up as full blog-posts, meaning a more coherent and thorough message distribution.

If you can afford it hire a maid service for the first 6 months after the baby is born.

“If I were a marketer working at Procter and Gamble this is what I’d be studying.”

Which explains why you are NOT a marketer at P&G

“Does it make you think differently of Google? Why?”

No, why should it. They’ve been doing it anyway without the user seeing it. Now you see it which should be better. (It seems strange that this has been popping only over the last couple of days… I’ve been using it for weeks already… Was I an early beta, or am I one of th few routinely checking my setting options?)

“That’s a bad move.”

Isn’t it a good move? You really want more blog, email, twitter spam based on what you write? If you mention having ice cream, do you want ice cream ads by every venue imaginable over the internet? Doesn’t this show that Google isn’t taking all of your data and selling it to anyone for direct advertising?

The tracking by itself won’t pose much of security issues. But things could be disastrous if this couples with some sort of security compromise.

OpenDNS has hijacked my address bar!
I use address bar search frequently (like, every other search that I do.). I have also setup my router to use OpenDNS. After their grand announcement, I was surprised (shocked?) to see that all my address bar searches are being taken over the OpenDNS ‘guide’. I didn’t consent to that. Yahoo is not my preferred search engine and I have no intention of using it.

This is nothing but adware on the web. What they have done is basically taken over the address bar of all browsers (for those who have signed up to use OpenDNS). (I know it is DNS and it is supposed to do that, but there is a limit – I don’t want it to take over my searches too).

At least, there is an easy solution to this – just switch back to my ISP’s DNS server.
I did send them an email about it and I am waiting for their reply.

The only problem with personalization I’ve seen is when I decide to search for something different (which is when I would need “help” the most).

I am an engineer and I do regular searches on scientific books, terms, etc. One day I decide to check out something new because I met this really interesting chick who studies poly sci. I would have a tough time finding the right links.

Thanks to a little Firefox add-on Google doesn’t get my search reports. At least I don’t think they do.

The hypocrisy in this thread is just incredible – would all of you who seem to have no problems with G History say the same if it were the M company or anyone else for that matter? This is like saying I shop at Seven Eleven everyday so I suppose it is ok to share my credit card details with them.

I want to thank Scoble for atleast offering to take a position that while not necessarily critical of Google atleast makes us wary of it.

“would all of you who seem to have no problems with G History say the same if it were the M company or anyone else for that matter?”

I wouldn’t give it to Microsoft, and yes, I would have no problem giving it to Yahoo.

No hypocrisy here.

@vivek – what utter rubbish. Sure it’s your opinion, but if Microsoft produced the frequency and quality of tools that google do, I have no doubts that people would be happy to include it in the IE bar.

Championing one cause doesn’t mean that there aren’t any other worthy causes.

Hrrmph, since my nephews and my sister and various friends, all use my laptop at differing times, painting a profile of me, will be a missed shot, but serves as a good reminder to log outta gmail. I can only wonder what I must look like in the trend analysis, hahah. Spooky really, but I used real POP3 and others for important stuff anyways, but all that data collection, scary esp. if they pitch to the Feds and people believe the data.

Why can’t google allow us to store our search data locally? or maybe at some other server (of our choosing).

@Paul, actually it’s not rubbish. It’s a fair point. It was highly amusing to note how few people had a problem with the DoubleClick deal (suddenly DoubleClick “fits in better” with Googles culture…yes DoubleClick is now an admired company…ha!). And now this. It’s fascinating stuff, really.

Anyway for me it’s simple. I don’t care which multi-billion dollar corporation it is. I value my online privacy.