Google Dashboard Launches; Some Skeptic
Google launched their Dashboard today and it came with some decent fanfare, but also came with a bit of a yellow caution flag from a consumer watch-dog group.
The dashboards are meant to corral all of a googler's aggregates various services—i.e. Docs, Gmail, Blogger, PIcasa, etc.—in one nice neat little package. The dashboard provides access to all the necessary settings and privacy information needed to control your Google services.
Here's a the Google-like video explanation:
The new Google Dashboard touted by the Internet giant as offering users “transparency, choice and control” of user data stored by the company doesn’t give consumers adequate control over protecting their information from Google’s marketing machine, Consumer Watchdog said today.
Consumer Watchdog applauded the company for giving consumers a single place to go to manage data, but said Google needed to give consumers the ability to stop being tracked by the company and to delete information associated with their computer’s IP address from the Google servers.
The suggestion by Consumer Watchdog is to offer a simple “Make-me-anonymous” or “Don’t track” button or icon that would prevent search information from being logged at the choice of the user.
Some users commenting on various stories online didn't seem to be worried:
"That's really interesting. I knew Google stored all my data, but I feel more comfortable being able to see it," said Guillaume Wolf via the comment section on a Google System post.
"It’s a smart move for the company as it wants to assuage growing consumer and political concern about the sheer amount of data it collects and its clout over the Internet ecosystem," wrote the Venture Beat.
What do you think of Google's dashboard? Is it comforting to have a steering where of sorts or do you feel like it's a move by Google to reach deeper into your social web life?
Share your thoughts in the comments.
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