Google Slices Your Web
Evil, Toolbar April 19th, 2007 - By Haochi
Google today announced that they have renamed “Search History” to “Web History” and added a new feature to it which “makes it easy to view and search across the pages you’ve visited”, that is, they will know what website you have visited and will know the content of the pages. The feature is automatically enabled if you have Google Toolbar installed, using the PageRank indicator.
That’s sad… I have to stop using Web History to protect my privacy until Google makes a separate setting for this feature. :(
What you think about letting Google know all your online activities? Share your thought.
April 19th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
I think Google is planing a Stumbleupon Killer.
April 19th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
It is not “automatically enabled if you have Google Toolbar installed, using the PageRank indicator.”
You have to explicitly give them permission to enable this feature.
April 20th, 2007 at 2:34 am
I’m not that bothered about Google knowing all my search history, I’m actually looking forward to being able to search thorugh my history. I often forget to bookmark useful websites and forgot which computer I browsed it on so have to search through the hisory on multiple PCs.
Shame I’ve just switched to a Mac and won’t be able to use the feature in Safari :(
April 20th, 2007 at 3:02 am
i dont care either (since nobody knows my password on my home :P)
i hate re recommendation , never gave me something im interested ;/
April 20th, 2007 at 4:51 am
I have enabled it. I don’t think they are going to use it, but make good personalisation features out of it.
btw, they do have “froogle” searches (forgot to rename in the history)
April 20th, 2007 at 8:11 am
Dave B. is right, it isn’t automatically enabled.
That said, at first I wasn’t sure if I was pleased that Google is doing this. However on more thought, because by default it is NOT on, they’re careful to not step over the privacy barrier. That is reasonable.
Anyway, it doesn’t bother me one way or the other. I didn’t enable it, but only because I use Stumble Upon so it’s not all that helpful for me. I keep the search history though for reference.
April 20th, 2007 at 9:56 am
This will be great if you can delete items.
April 20th, 2007 at 10:43 am
“What you think about letting Google know all your online activities?”
Hasn’t Google always “known” the activity (web logs), now they are only providing an avenue to view it. As long as they keep it secure and private - so strangers can not view others’ history, history isn’t sold to scumbag marketers, and the gubmint isn’t handed history in a nicely wrapped package like other engines are so wont to do - then I have no problem with it.
April 20th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Haochi, you don’t need to stop using anything — there is a feature on the web history website called ‘pause’ and ‘resume’. When you pause it, google stops documenting your activities.. or we hope it does.
April 20th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
“You have to explicitly give them permission to enable this feature.”
- I am sure there are a lot of people (majority) don’t read the Official Google Blog or blogs like Googlified, and Google will just start recording the sites the users visited without their knowledge of that.
“Shame I’ve just switched to a Mac and won’t be able to use the feature in Safari :(”
- Hey, Firefox is cross-platform - you can use it on OS X as well.
“This will be great if you can delete items.”
- Yes you can, “remove items“.
“you don’t need to stop using anything…”
- That’s what I meant. People don’t say “I pause using it“, do they?
April 20th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
Haochi: “I am sure there are a lot of people (majority) don’t read the Official Google Blog or blogs like Googlified, and Google will just start recording the sites the users visited without their knowledge of that.”
No, you’ve missed the point. You have to actually ENABLE it BEFORE it begins to record. It wouldn’t matter if anyone reads the blogs or not. It will NOT be on at all.
Sheesh! This is like conspiracy theorists! Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?