The proof in this is the fact that this post seems to indicate that “Google Dashboard” is the same thing as “Google Web History”. Alas, it is not. Google Web History has been around for a long time. It was always just a click away. You can opt-out of it, but you lose the usefulness it gives. All of the other features Google Dashboard displays are the features that have been there all along. So, anyone seeing Google Dashboard as a new way to collect data misses the point that Google Dashboard doesn’t collect new data at all. Instead, it simply shows the data that Google has been collecting all along… and the data Google has clearly stated they have been collecting all. The typical user (and the writer of this post) clearly didn’t read and was ignorant of this data collection for all of this time… many months and in some cases years.

This is exactly what Google Dashboard was meant to solve. It was meant to shed even more light on the issue so that people can’t complain that Google isn’t being transparent enough. And, yet, the even more typical user will never have heard of Google Dashboard, so this battle can never be won.

The ignorance shown in this post also shows another problem of the typical user. They think they know how everything works, but don’t take the time to test it and either prove or disprove these theories to themselves. This post states, “Alas, if they forgot to sign-out with their google account? (they usually do :D) and some curious cat type-in google.com/dashboard on tommy’s PC – Voila! she realize, Tommy the sheep is in fact Tommy the rabid dog in real life!” The simple answer is, “No, that’s not true at all.”

It takes less then a few days experimenting with Google Dashboard (and with Google Web History) to realize that merely being signed in isn’t enough. Even if you are signed into Google.com or Gmail, etc… even though your sign-in status carries over from one service to another… if you visit Google Web History, you are asked to sign in AGAIN. The same goes for Google Dashboard. There is an added level of security for these two services (the same applies to Google Health) for the obvious reasons.

So, this post is patently false on a lot of ideas, insults the intelligence of users who are willing to take more than 15 seconds to observe the world around them, and is likely written by someone who is STILL trying to get the clock to stop flashing 12:00 on their VCR.

1) You can pause the collection of data.
2) You can tell it to delete specific items from your history.
3) You can tell it to clear your entire history.

Okay. Three things….there are three things you can do.

By the way, it is Google’s automated algorithms that analyse the usage data to serve you even better. It is not as if some human is prying into your private data. That would be impossible, even for Google.

Deleting history from your browser only deletes it from your computer. The server end information cannot be deleted from from the browser. That information remains with any service provider. That’s where the Dashboard helps… by giving you access to their server to delete browsing history from their servers.