Google Adds Search History Feature

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."

Comments

Paranoid here we go..

[VaultX]

Here comes the paranoia that google is tracking EVERYONEs searches..just hiding the fact from those who don't sign up for this.

Re:Paranoid here we go..

[lgw]

That's one of those "extra features'. The Department of Homeland Security can do text-based searches of your everyone's searches - watch for it in the next Beta version! ;)

Re:Paranoid here we go..

[anthony_dipierro]

Absolutely, I think the advantage to google is tremendous. They already target ads to people based on location, which they guess from the IP address. If they know exactly who you are they can target ads a lot better, for instance they can target ads for you based on what you've searched for in the past. If they get enough people logging in, then they've even found a partial solution for the problem of people clicking on the same ad over and over from different IP addresses.

There are also lots of potential advantages to the end-user. Letting you access your search history is just the beginning.

This is also extremely open to abuse if the information is kept too long and falls into the hands of the wrong people. Imagine your google searches in the hands of an oppressive government. Search for communist writings, bible quotations, or Jewish pickles, and go to jail (yes, I'm kidding about the Jewish pickles, but just think what a modern day Hitler could do with access to everyone's google searches).

Not too compelling

[Ars-Fartsica]

Yahoo is apparently rolling out a similar type service soon...don't see much use in looking up old searches frankly. Its probably more useful for these firms to collect data for advertisers than it is for aiding in my future data retrieval.

People are paranoid.

[natrius]

If you don't want to be tracked on the Internet, there's a simple solution: don't have a static IP address and turn off cookies.

With that said, if you think this feature is a privacy issue, you should probably have your web browser history and cache disabled. I can't wait for a virus that emails the victim's history and cache to everyone in their address book. Hilarity would definitely ensue.

Here come the custom searches

[rjelks]

While the privacy issues were the first thing on my mind, something else occurs to me now. If Google is keeping track of search histories, aren't personalized searches the next step. If Google can tell what type of sites you like to use, couldn't they lean the search one way or the other?

This will drive the seo guys crazy.

Re:Oh no!!!

[aussie_a]

No, you don't have to delete it. Just don't login. Duh.

Google What?

[StikyPad]

Am I the only one who saw Google Adds and thought, "typo..."

Re:What about employers

[anthony_dipierro]

Does google have porn ads in the first place? In any case, if you're worried about your employers in this way I'd suggest you don't log in to Google at work in the first place.

Personally I wouldn't log in to any account from work, or from any computer that I don't own. Maybe it's paranoia, but I don't trust that my computer at work doesn't have a keystroke logger. I'd call it a good security practice.