Review your entire Google life on this handy new page
Using Google's many services -- Search, YouTube, Gmail, Maps, etc -- leaves behind a lot of information about your daily activities. In June 2015, Google launched a "My Account" dashboard, which lets you control the privacy aspects of the various Google services you use, but to actually see your history, you had to go to several different places.
Not anymore. Google has launched a My Activity page, which gives you a detailed overview of everything you've done on Google, ever (provided you haven't explicitly forbid Google to accumulate this data).
This includes your entire Chrome browsing history, search queries on Google, image searches, videos you've watched on YouTube, Google Now cards you've seen, to name a few. Android users and those heavily reliant on Google's services will likely find that this page contains their entire online life.
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The history is searchable, and you can also filter it by date and product. Furthermore, for each day Google will offer a neat overview, showing you how many items are there, and which platforms or services they're related to.
Not everything is here; for example, the aforementioned Maps history is located on a different page. However, you can access this and all other Google histories from the menu on the left.
While the feature is essentially a greatly enhanced version of your Chrome history, some users may want to stop Google from storing so much data about their online activities. You can fine tune those settings on Google's Activity Controls page, where you can pause Google from gathering data related to your web activity, location history, voice and audio activity, devices you use and your YouTube history.
Google's ad tracking has been expanded, but you can turn it off
This new feature is tied, Wired reports, to another major change related to Google services: Google is now using data it has gathered from you to serve you better-targeted ads. Google has previously done it on its own services, but this has now been expanded to third-party sites as well.
"When you use Google services like Search and YouTube, you generate data — things like what you’ve searched for and videos you’ve watched. (...) With this change, this setting may also include browsing data from Chrome and activity from sites and apps that partner with Google, including those that show ads from Google," Google wrote in a note to users.
To opt out of this new form of ad tracking, go to this page.
UPDATE: July 1, 2016, 11:26 a.m. CEST A Google has reached out to Mashable, clarifying that the feature will be opt-in instead of opt-out -- i.e., it will be turned off by default, and users will be offered an option to turn it on.
There, you can turn off "ads based on your interest" as well as "ads based on your interests on websites beyond google.com."
As Google points out, even if you turn both options off, you will still see ads, but these ads will be less relevant, and unrelated to your interests and previous visits to other sites. The ads still may be based on your general location.
The new options are being gradually rolled out; we've seen them on some accounts while they were absent on others. Users should get a notification to review their privacy settings as the new features become available.
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Topics Cybersecurity Google Privacy
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
