Managing your privacy when using Google services can be confusing, because there are so many settings, and it’s not clear what type of data the company retains on users. If you have a Google account, you may use it with a lot of Google services: beyond the basic search service (Google stores a record of your searches), you may also use Google for email, you may use Google Maps, which records your location, and you may sign in with your Google account to various apps and services.
Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.
Good for Google – but not enough. I gave up contact with Google when they told me I couldn’t use my (their!) mobile phone because they owned the transmitters/masts – and kept sending me “surveys” about hotels and “facilities” on my motorcycle tours. None of their business – they should stick to providing the service wew pay for through our phone charges!
Online advertising, and the business models that power it, are hardly transparent. I have read, though, that user data more than a month old is of little value to advertisers. In addition, one would think Google, as it collects user data, must extract information from those data to add to the profile ( or dossier) it maintains on users. So I tend to think Google is not giving anything of value up if they delete user history after 18 months.
But what do I know? I’m just Google’s product, not Google’s customer.
18-month-old browsing data isn’t useful to marketers. This sounds like Google is being nice to customers, but they’re really just saving space on their servers by removing data useless to their business.