Ask Slashdot: What Does Your Data Mean To Google? (google.com)

shanen writes: Due to the recent kerfuffles, I decided to try again to see what Google had on me. This time I succeeded and failed, in contrast to the previous pure failures. Yes, I did find Google's takeout website and downloaded all of "my data," but no, it means nothing to me. Here are a few sub-questions I couldn't answer:

1. Much more data than I ever created, so where did the rest come from?
2. How does the data relate to the characteristic vector that Google uses to characterize me?
3. What tools do Googlers use to make sense of the data?

Lots more questions, but those are the ones that are most bugging me right now. Question 2. is probably heaviest among them, since I've read that the vector has 700 dimensions... So do you have any answers? Or better questions? Or your own takeout experiences to share? Oh yeah, one more thing. Based on my own troubled experience with the download process, it is clear that Google doesn't really want us to download the so-called "our own" data. My Question 4. is now: "What is Google hiding about me from me?"

Comments

Re: Et tu , Btute?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, selling the data outright is stupid. It cuts you out of the business model.

This is why you get targeted ads on i devices and Cook says they don't sell your info. Google and Apl never actually sell the information, but simply serve the ad they determine as "targeted" towards you.

That's an embedding vector

[Visarga]

The 700 dimensions vector (if it's true) is not something you can make sense of. It's an embedding vector that represents your characteristics in relation to all the other people. Each individual dimension doesn't have a meaning.

Re:Where were the browser histories?

[swillden]

So far in my explorations of the data I haven't seen any browser history data, though I strongly suspect the google is collecting it

Unless you have web history enabled (check the settings in myactivity.google.com), I'm quite certain Google is not storing your browser history. I think this is a distinct question from tracking your web browsing through Google Analytics, assuming you haven't opted out of that. In the latter case, Google gets information about the sites you visit from those sites and uses it to update your interest profile, but doesn't store the actual visit history.

Note that there is almost certainly data Google has about you which it cannot show you, because it can't be 100% certain that you are you. Data derived from logged-out interactions can be tentatively correlated with you, but since there's no way to be completely certain you're the same person, it would be a violation of the privacy of whoever actually had that logged-out interaction (which might be you) to show it to you. In the case of logged-in interactions, of course, it's reasonable to presume that anything done while logged into account A can be safely shown to account A.