Does Google Know Too Much About You?

Everyone knows Google as being one of the number search engines on the Internet. Google can instantly become your best friend, with easy access to thousands of answers to all of your most burning questions. You can fire it up and find just about anything you are looking for. What many people have been finding out including myself is that Google may know a little more about you than what you thought it did.

Remember all of those searches you did months ago on Google when you were bored and the only one home on boring Saturday afternoon? Well lets just say you immediately cleared your history out so no one else would know. Guess what ? There is a possibility that little secret can come up to bite you later on down the road when someone unknowingly goes to perform a similar search.

All it takes is a simple search from http://www.google.com/history/trends and you will find all of your precious memories that you thought were all tucked away, now available for you or anyone else to see.

Google keeps track of every search query you have ever entered, including ones that you have deleted. You wonder how this is possible when you may go back and see that they are not there after you delete your history and temporary Internet files. That's right ,even after you have cleared your cache, Google stores your info in its high tech capacity brain. Don't think your personal email address is all that safe either, granted the contents inside your email will not be tracked and is most likely strictly confidential. This nightmare can become a reality though if you happen to sign into your Gmail account; (a free email account that is free for anyone to sign up and use), on multiple computers. Gmail can keep track of all of the computers that you use to access your email and information. One example of how this could happen would be that you are on the public computer at the Library and you completely sign off and go home. Sometimes even if the history is cleared on the public computer, your user name may still come up and prompt the next user for your password, this can be unsettling for some who don't want their presence known on others computers.

There is also a handy start page that Google hosts called Igoogle. Igoogle personally clings to your Internet footsteps and your every move as you buzz your way through the WWW. You can personalize your start page to even have the sun rise and then set according to what time zone you reside in. Igoogle can also keep track of all of your favorite things from Movies, Television Shows, photos of Sacred Places, Weather, your favorite Games, Music Lyrics and Maps. There are actually hundreds of different kinds of Widgets that you can place on your start page to personalize your very own little trackable world.

Igoogle also can be a handy dandy little helper where you can add a Dictionary, Thesaurus, Spell Checker and Clock to your Igoogle page. Yes, this clever tool is quite the wonderment and best of all it is totally free, but free always comes with a cost.

Well lets see, what price do you want to pay for your relatives or coworkers to know all the sites you have visited? Google memorizes everywhere you go. Even the latest spyware and ad tracking software cant hold it back, basically it is unstoppable!

Google loves to track your web footsteps and save them for you to retrieve later. Wouldn't you want to know your favorite visited website that you have searched for last Month? What about your top clicks or your top queries? The other interesting thing is Google knows what time of the day you do your most searching. Say you are researching some background information for some upcoming articles you want to write for Associated Content and you do this when you get home from work at 6PM. Now, Google knows your peak search time is between 6PM and 7PM. So it will keep track of everything for you. Remember when you were searching the web to see if Jamie Lynn Spears was really pregnant? Well Google remembers when and how many times and different search tags you entered to get the most accurate information. Best of all it tracks it and confines it to a handy dandy little grid, so you can easily look at what you have been doing on the web this whole time.

Google is still hands down one of the most technologically advanced search engines on the web and so much more. Google can be your best friend and you can share all of your deepest darkest secrets with it, but like best friends as we know, some can turn around and stab us in the back. So use your own judgment as to how much information you really want Google to know.

Google isn't necessarily a bad thing, unless you are obsessed with web security. Google is very reputable and sound and undoubtedly wont steal anything from you, well except everywhere you go on the web. We all have to keep in mind that in this day and age most of our personal information is public and surfing the web is as free spirited as jaywalking down main street.