Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Google knows what you searched last Summer


You may not know what you've searched for last Summer, but if you're a Google user it's highly likely Google has got you covered, knowing not only what you've searched then, but also on each and every single day of your internet life. And now it allows you to easily export all that.

It's not the first time we talk about much Google (and other online service) knows about us, which is both scary as well as useful, sometimes - like your location history, allowing us to know where we were at a particular time in a particular date - and this search history is just like that.

Google keeps a record of everything you searched for and when you've searched for it (pro tip: if you're planning to commit something illegal, it's better not to search for it on Google, or risk having that record used against you :) and now you can easily download all of it on "Settings-Download", with Google alerting you to download this archive in a trusted computer, or risk having potential sensitive information leaked to the world.



You may look at it both ways: as an intrusive way to track everything you do on the internet (and in this case you can simply delete your entire search history and disable your search History, which will only be active if you've enabled it before); or as a way that allows you to go back and see what was on your mind in any particular day, acting almost as a personal diary of sorts.

For me, even though it's easy to recognize just how valuable all this info is for Google, I prefer to look at it as also being also useful for us - and at least Google is a company that gives us access to all (most?) of the data it has about us, which cannot be said for other companies.

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