You Were Right to Delete Your Google History

We deleted our Google history when the new privacy policies came into being, and it's a fair bet you did too, and based on a great long read Thursday from Gizmodo's Mat Honan, it sounds like we were right to be suspicious of Google.

We deleted our Google history when the new privacy policies came into being, and it's a fair bet you did too, and based on a great long read Thursday from Gizmodo's Mat Honan, it sounds like we were right to be suspicious of Google. Although it also sounds like simply deleting browsing history isn't going to be enough to prevent the company from eventually knowing everything about us. Honan's point is that Google, which is insanely good at collecting data about its users on the Internet, has to start getting those users off the internet and into its own apps in order to survive, and to make those apps effective, it has to collect and share even more data from users. A Googler even told Honan the company didn't see itself as a search company anymore but rather, in CEO Larry Page's words, "a single unified, ‘beautiful' product across everything." Then there's this paragraph, which will chill any privacy buff:

Google has to get you under its tent, and break down all the silos between its individual products once you're there. It needs you to reveal your location, your friends, your history, your desires, your finances; nothing short of your essence. And it needs to combine all that knowledge together. That's Search Plus Your World. "Your World" is not just your friends, or your location. It's your everything. The breadth of information Google wants to collect and collate is the stuff of goosebumps.

And the thing is, Google's going to get it. All of it.

Creepy. The post is worth a read over at Gizmodo.