Google Goes Portal With “My Search History”
Google Labs unveils the latest Google service: My Search History. The short story is that Search History saves every search you make, no matter which computer you make it from, and lets you go back and view and use that history. The long story reveals far more staggering implications.
First, the details.
My Search History is available at http://www.google.com/searchhistory. You log in with your Google account, which means it works from any system. Now, when you go to My Search History, you will be presented with your previous searches and a calendar indicating visually the frequency with which you use Google.
Even bigger, when you go to Google.com, you are presented at the top of the page with this:
username@email.com | My Search History | My Account | Sign out
Yes, ladies and gentleman, that is what we call a portal. Google may want to avoid it, but with a logon at Google.com, they are now officially a portal. One day, I wouldn’t be surprised if we get to customize our Google.com with our favorite tabs, the option to integrate things like Google Suggest, and even custom Google Doodle. The Google Account is now part of your personal Google experience.
It’s funny, but a few night’s ago, a local news shows here in New York ran a story about how Google keeping track of “everything you ever searched for”. They even showed Daniel Brandt’s Google Watch. I, of course was yelling at the screen that they didn’t, that Google doesn’t do that. Well, if you want them to, now you can, just by signing up. I think it could prove pretty darn useful.
Here’s some privacy data, from the press email:
My Search History requires the user to register for a Google Account and their search history will only be made available to them if they are signed in to that account. All information is stored securely on Google’s computers thus enabling users to view their history from any computer. If they choose, users can temporarily “pause” collecting their search history by clicking the “Pause” button in the product interface. Users can also remove individual items from their history through the product interface or delete the service via their My Account page.
So, how well does it work? Well, it kept track of some searches I did where I clicked on nothing. It also did pretty well with a “Search Within These Results” search, and a “site:” search. However, the integration with the Google pages dissapeared on the “site:” results page, so that’s one bug that needs to be worked out. It didn’t have any trouble recording searches from the toolbar.
On the My Search History page, the previous searches appear as the search term, beneath which are the sites you cliked on and the time you clicked on them. Searches with no clickthrough are mentioned at the bottom. The top of the page has a search box, so you can search your history or the web, and below it is a pause link (for porn, of course). The pause button should be part of the login information at the top of the screen, as it is a very important feature for many lonely workers who don’t want to get fired.
The biggest problem is that it doesn’t work with all of Google’s services. It would be quite useful to have search history for Google News, Froogle, Images and more.
I think it is going to get exciting to look back at the calendar and see how many Google searches I’ve made. I think My Search History has a lot of potential, most of which will not be obvious until I’ve used it more. Most power searchers will discover over time methods they can use to search better and faster by taking advantage of the search history data. And that is certainly a good thing.
Google My Search History works with these browsers (or better): Internet Explorer 4, Firefox, Netscape 6, Mozilla, and Safari 1.2.
Just like when people were shocked to find out what Google Desktop Search could manage to find on their computers, some people are going to have a rude awakening when people they know check out their My Search History and see the kind of F’ed up stuff they’ve been doing searches for.
Comment by Stu | April 20, 2005
I don’t know looking at someone’s search history is like looking at someone’s diary. You can’t get mad about what you see because you weren’t asked to look at it.
Comment by Nicholas | April 20, 2005
> It’s funny, but a few night’s ago, a local news shows here in New York ran
> a story about how Google keeping track of “everything you ever searched
> for”. They even showed Daniel Brandt’s Google Watch. I, of course was
> yelling at the screen that they didn’t, that Google doesn’t do that.
Nathan, it’s not funny that Google has managed to fool someone like you who watches Google more closely than most people. This is a triumph of clever language buried deep in their privacy policies. The bottom line is that Google keeps track whether you want them to or not, and always has.
Let me quote from their privacy FAQ at http://www.google.com/searchhistory/privacyfaq.html:
“You can choose to stop storing your searches in My Search History either temporarily or permanently, or remove items, as described in My Search History Help. However, as is common practice in the industry, Google maintains a separate logs system for auditing purposes and to help us improve the quality of our services for users. For example, we use this information to audit our ads systems, understand which features are most popular to users, improve the quality of our search results, and help us combat vulnerabilities such as denial of service attacks.”
The proper interpretation of this page is that Google tracks everything to the maximum extent possible, and always has. If you sign up for My Search History, you can choose to delete some of the history that Google makes available for your viewing pleasure, but it still exists on Google’s computers. If you don’t sign up for My Search History, Google is still collecting that information, but you can never see it.
This is what Google’s cookie is for that expires in 2038, which Google has been using for at least five years now.
Delete your Google cookie regularly, and you’ll be much safer because it means that Google has to give you a new unique ID the next time you visit any of their sites.
Comment by Daniel Brandt | April 20, 2005
Daniel, can’t you just say “Wow, how great is it that my website was shown on a New York news show”?
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But seriously, my problem with the news report was that it said that Google keeps track of everything you search for, tries to link it to your name and does link it to your IP address, and then uses it to put ads on your screen. A completely inaccurate quote: “If you write an email in Gmail about [subject], the next day you might see a popup ad about [subject]”. It bothered me the assumption that ads are currently tailored to people rather than page content, when they clearly are (otherwise we would see way-off-topic ads). Even you can agree that sort of insinuation is off the mark and bad journalism.
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I’ll agree that the idea of Google keeping track of searchers and using that information is scary, and that Google Watch makes some excellent points. However, I guess I’m drinking the Google cool-aid when I say that on some level, I believe they aren’t using that information in evil ways, like selling it to or sharing it with advertisers, or reading your email. If Google does decide to use Search History to personalize advertising, however, I’m okay with that. Accurate advertising, so long as it is unobtrusive, is a good thing, not a bad one.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | April 20, 2005
This is cool. How long until you can integrate this into Blogger or an RSS feeder to Outlook for notes? Something like that would be sweet.
You always find the good stuff.
Comment by Scott | April 20, 2005
“I believe they aren’t using that information in evil ways, like selling it to or sharing it with advertisers, or reading your email.”
Let’s leave Gmail out of this for now, because My Search History does not concern Gmail. I agree that there is no evidence that Gmail ads are targeted personally (that comes at some point in the future), but rather they are currently targeted to email content.
But let’s agree that Google, by any reading of their privacy policies, records the following for all web searches: date and time, search terms, IP address, unique ID from the cookie, and browser preferences. They don’t know what you clicked on unless there’s some sort of redirect in the URL, but once you have the search terms, that’s not particularly interesting anyway.
Let’s also agree that Google can retrieve this information by using the globally-unique cookie ID. Otherwise, there is no purpose to having a single cookie with a globally-unique ID in it that’s used across all of their various services. (You don’t need a unique ID to set browser preferences, for example. You don’t even need a cookie for that. All you need is a well-crafted bookmark.)
Finally, let’s agree that Google has never, in their entire history, commented on their relations with any of the various governments in any of the countries where they operate.
Question: If the FBI, or the Burmese government, or whomever, asks Google for information from their databases, will Google require a subpoena from the FBI and tell the Burmese dictator to take a hike? We just don’t know. What we do know is if they have the information and the FBI asks them if they can retrieve it, it’s a felony to lie to the FBI. Ask Martha Stewart — she’ll back me up on this.
Isn’t it smarter, considering Google’s five-year silence on these issues since I first started asking questions, to assume that Google is cozy with government officials? Or would you rather gloss over the issue and gulp the kool-aid?
And yes, we have the same problem with all search engines. But Google’s secrecy is something that stands apart from all the others.
Comment by Daniel Brandt | April 20, 2005
Google’s Calendar - Phase 1 initiated.
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For people who do a lot of online research, this must be invaluage. I know how useful the History functions of Westlaw and Lexis are, I just wish they lasted longer.
Is this almost as good as bookmarking? Or at least, a cool alternative. As long as you regularly prune the bad links you followed, it’s an amazing tool for keep track of “How did I find that last time?” problems.
Comment by Brock | April 20, 2005
I’m finding the more and more different tools are available. The less and less I actully have to search for anything.
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Is Google becoming so efficient that they will work themselves out of a business model?
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As for the privacy issue, what web server doesn’t log all the activities of their users. As a webmaster, I spend a large amount of time looking at reports generated from such logs. If Google does have this information, isn’t nice of them to share it for our benefit to (through My Search History).
Comment by Nicholas | April 20, 2005
Scott - Done!
Google Search History RSS, to quote me:
“This tool goes through your current Google Search History, grabs all of your recent searches and turns it into an RSS feed. Would work best set up as a nightly/hourly cron job, redirecting to a file.”
http://ejohn.org/projects/ghistory/
Comment by John Resig | April 20, 2005
Agreed, you can’t really use this or previous logging to play into the “google is evil” mentality. If they’re evil because of it, then every system administrator is evil as well.
Comment by matt | April 20, 2005
If i am not mistaking http://a9.com has this for a time now. So this is nothing really new. Only for google it is.
Comment by FerRory | April 21, 2005
FerRory: Not only does A9 have it, so does MyJeeves, and some other search engines as well. I’d say MyJeeves is the better of the two.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | April 21, 2005
If you go back to the search results page, Google lets you know what time you clicked on whatever links you followed (ie. “Apr 20″ or “1:39.” Kinda cool.
Comment by Matt Saler | April 21, 2005
[…] Google’s My Search History - Big Bro is watching April 21st, 2005 You may want to start deleting your Google cookies regularly. Google recently announced My Search History, a service designed to allow searchers to track their results over time. The short story is that Search History saves every search you make, no matter which computer you make it from, and lets you go back and view and use that history. The long story reveals far more staggering implications. […]
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