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Google Adds Search History Feature

Posted by timothy on from the film-at-11 dept.

Philipp Lenssen writes "Google has released My Search History (Beta). Login with your Google account (like your Gmail account), and a search history feature will be integrated right into the Google.com homepage. You can then retrieve pages you've previously found by either clicking on calendar dates, or by performing a full-text search. Other features are available as well."

6 of 278 comments (clear)

  1. a9 by AnonymousCowheart · · Score: 4, Informative

    Hasn't a9 been doing this for some time?

  2. Re:Paranoid here we go.. by anthony_dipierro · · Score: 5, Informative

    As was pointed out by someone else, they definitely are tracking everyone's searches. See http://www.google.com/jobs/britney.html. "Each of these variations was entered by at least two different unique users within a three month period" You can't get that information without tracking searches and retaining the individual information over a three month period.

  3. Re:I forsee by KinkifyTheNation · · Score: 5, Informative
    Be aware that your Google search history main page contains your last search in the URL (it's a "prev" parameter). Sites you then click on may thus check their referrer logs to get to know what you were searching for previously, which is a potential privacy issue. Google has been alerted to this.
    They already have!
  4. Re:Paranoid here we go.. by That's+Unpossible! · · Score: 5, Informative

    Google does track everyones searches already. However, if you turn this service on, they also track which links you click on in the search results.

    I don't see a problem with either thing since they are up-front about what they are doing and the privacy policy is clear about how they use this information.

    "Upon your first visit to Google, a cookie is sent to your computer that uniquely identifies your browser. A "cookie" is a small file containing a string of characters that is sent to your computer when you visit a website. We use cookies to improve the quality of our service and to better understand how people interact with us. Google does this by storing user preferences in cookies and by tracking user trends and patterns of how people search."

    --
    Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
  5. Re:A9 does it with a plugin by image · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just to clarify (disclaimer, I'm a happy A9 employee), A9 saves the search history on the server. The A9 toolbar (for both IE and Firefox) does allow you to access your history, but it is entirely optional. You can sign in to A9 using your Amazon account and try out that (and many more features).

  6. Re:What about employers by Infinite+Entropy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes, Google has plenty of porn adds, but oddly enough they will NOT accept any adds for guns at all. Very strange. Maybe an insight into the founder's politics.