Google Dashboard: full disclosure?

This morning, Google has launched Google Dashboard, a “privacy dashboard” intended to help users see what information Google holds about them across its various services.

Google is able to track a huge proportion of its account-holders’ online activities. Google has my personal emails (27,473 conversations since 2004), my personal contacts’ details, a full history of my web searches and of much of my web browsing. It knows what videos I’ve watched on YouTube, and what RSS feeds I’ve read through Google Reader.

It’s useful to have this summary of the different ways in which Google knows about us. That said, does this really tell us what Google knows? As any company in the data management business can confirm, the power of personal data comes not from the raw information, but from the ability to analyse that information in order to identify patterns of behaviour and so on.

So a criticism that could be made of Google Dashboard is that it is an example of “informing to conceal”. We are given apparently comprehensive details of the information Google possesses about us. But the real privacy concerns – not to mention the commercial value to Google of the information – comes from what they are able to deduce about us from this information: and that, not surprisingly, they are keeping to themselves.