Thursday, November 5, 2009

How much does Google know (officially)?

Earlier this week I asked "How much data do I generate?", now I saw that Google is adding another service, the "Google account dashboard", that let's you see what Google is knowing about you. Supposedly.

It's interesting to see statistics about your account activities in one place. The interesting question is how do you interpret, how do you analyze it (from Google's perspective)? What does Google really know (or guess) about me? The question is not Google-specific, but applies to all those companies that collect data about you.

It is good to see such a feature in place because it creates more awareness of the data privacy/data collection issue. I would like to see similar services by other companies.