When I read Google’s web hsitory announcement, which remembers every page you browse through the Google Toolbar, my first reaction was that it could be helpful to tracking down something I’d seen before. Then, I wondered about what it would mean for my privacy if they knew everything I’ve read until I started thinking about what they already know (or at least could):
- Gmail - All the emails I've sent and received in the last 3 odd years, and chats I've had through Gmail or Google Talk.
- Search History - Through the Firefox search history and a personalized startpage they know what I've searched for. They should also be able to tell that I can't spell because I use Google as a spell checker and quick dictionary through their define: some-fancy-word searches.
- Reader - All the many blogs I try to keep up with.
- Google Calendar - They know where I spend my time and who with in meatspace too. Likely not very juicy - maybe I should add entries "Clubbing with B. Spears & L. Lohan"?
- Checkout - Having purchased something through Google Checkout they know my credit card info and where I live. I do trust Google completely with my credit card info because they don't need my money since they have a machine that generates it for them.
- Maps - Getting to our place has a couple tricky, unmarked turns (this being Massachusetts after all) and having played air traffic controller for visiting guests, I made a map of directions using their new "my maps" feature in Google Maps.
- Analytics - Measures the traffic of my blog and another site I co-manage, tourb.us, with a lot more graphs and relationships that I can even truly use.
- Google Desktop - For finding documents and non-gmail emails I've run Google Desktop, which could send all sorts of things back to the mothership.
- Docs - I'm impressed with Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and have started using it for my limited document writing needs. Yet another place for the GOOG to mine for nuggets of tasty, tasty data.
- Mobile apps, Video, Google Apps for Your Domain, Google Earth, Picasa, Google Groups, etc., etc.. The list is long. </ul> When I see stories about Google moving to fake form submissions to search the "deep web" or the concerns around the acquisition of DoubleClick I think I should throw in the privacy towel. Just give in and tell Google who I had a crush on in 8th grade, hand over some embarrassing photos from college and fork over my dental records and hope they stay non-evil.