Mumbai: Do you remember what you were looking for in Google exactly a year ago to this second? Well, the website does and is ready to share the information with you.
Beginning from Thursday night, Google has started sharing with users all information it contains about them, like search history and user data on services such as Gmail (including Google Talk transcripts), Google Reader, YouTube, Orkut, Google Books, Blogger and Picassa.
News of the application, called Dashboard, has sparked widespread debate about online privacy. "It's very scary to know how much information there is about me," said Kunal Jauhari, 25, a commodity trader who was alerted about the new Google feature by a tweet. "My search history goes back 18 months. Internet searches that I have no memory of conducting are listed with the exact date and time. I have deleted most of the search history but who knows if the information is really deleted."
Dashboard, which gives a user the option of deleting his or her Google history, makes the website and its services more transparent and is aimed at the deep cynicism of a section of internet users about Google's business practices. But Jauhari is not convinced. "With Dashboard I know what Google knows about my online life, but I still don't know how Google uses this information," he said.
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