Google releases Dashboard

06/11/09 posted by Liz Niland

How much does Google know about you? Given the ever growing suite of applications by the more-than-simply-search giant, it’s likely they know a lot more about you than you realise.

Enter Google Dashboard. Described on their blog as “an effort to provide [users] with greater transparency and control over their own data”, the Google Dashboard displays the data stored when you are signed into your account and visit Google-affiliated sites.

As I sit at a computer all day, I figured Google would have a mother load of information about me, but I was still surprised at just how much they have access to. Capturing not only my Gmail chat conversations, recent searches and RSS subscriptions, the photos I’ve uploaded to my Blogger account are also on file.

Although it is a little scary on the one hand, it is interesting to now have access to this information (that you may not have known was even being kept!), and to understand more clearly that there’s not much you can keep hidden online.

Google Australia engineering director Alan Noble told Australian IT that the company “lives and dies on users’ trust”. “We're only ever one click away from a competitor - it's very easy for users to switch search engines,” he said. “Privacy is fundamental to trust, and that's our motivation here. We want to make sure our products are as secure and private as possible."