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Google knows. Did you know?

  • Writer: Andrew Kinnear
    Andrew Kinnear
  • Apr 28, 2009
  • 2 min read

If you have a Google Account, you may or may not know about Google History, which is a record of all the searches that you've done since activating your account. My account was only activated in 2006 when I migrated to Google from some other services, and I've managed to rack up over 11,000 searches. If you're concerned about privacy, rest assured that only Google (that's the giant company that you don't control) has access to the data. They use the information to better service your web, image, video and other queries, as well (I'm sure) to serve you better and more relevant content and advertising.The more relevant the content and advertising that they can serve, the higher likelihood of conversion, which translates to better revenue.What interests me about this is being able to access my own "Wayback Machine" and see what kinds of things I was searching for and clicking on over two years ago. Funny videos, interesting articles, etc.Google thinks the same thing, which I think is why they've added the 'bookmark' feature to this compilation, as well as promoting the Google Bookmarklet to drag to your toolbar for more accessible bookmarking. It makes sense.Could (or has) this information ever been the subject of a court case? It could almost be considered an alibi-- "You're honour-- I was clearly at home searching for Monkey Videos on the day in question, as you can see by my IP address, searches for the eact time period of the crime, and flawless password security."On the other hand, the prosecution may come back with "Objection-- what kind of nerd looks at Monkey Videos on a Saturday night in July?"...

 
 
 

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