12.02.2006

All your google are belong to us

I'm a google-whore. I freely admit this. I use a ton of their tools. Gmail. Calendar. The personalized search home page complete with widgets (or whatever google calls them, probably googets). Yahoo has the same tools and Ask.com is catching up with some neat stuff but still, google rules. Their tools are just dead simple to use. However, today I realized that their Search History tool is now saving my data for all of the following searches:
  • Web
  • Images
  • News
  • Froogle
  • Video
  • Maps
  • Music
That concerns me. Not so much the web stuff because I routinely go in there and clean up the search history. I do this not because I'm searching things that I don't want anyone to know about, but more because I like my search history to revolve around my professional searching on programming and whatnot. It's easier and faster to find things in there that way (note to google, should let users tag their searched and clicked items). What concerns me though is the map history. I've already become anal enough that I don't use my exact address when looking to get driving directions somewhere. I use my neighbors down the street. But now my neighbors address is stored in there. And now when I bring up my contacts in gmail, I can get a map to my friends and relatives houses, but of course then their addresses are in the search history too. I worry about this being some kind of junk mail magnet in the future. Or worse, some kind of google as big brother scenario where they know everything about you and everywhere you go. I may have to rethink my life as a google-whore and my utter addiction to their tools.