Peter Fleischer has posted an opinion piece covering personal search using Google. It addresses the benefits of using this technology, including keeping a history of your searches that can be used to keep searches more relevant to your interests. This is an undeniable advantage to someone looking to get better results.

Of more interest to me regarding the subject is user privacy. Now, right up front I will disclose that I am not lawyer, nor do I have any inside information on how Google is using the data it is gathering. That being said, there are a few good points regarding privacy in the article. It points out that users do not have to use a real name when they sign up for the service. I’m sure that this is not news to many savvy internet users. However, given that Google has access to information about their users from many sources, GMail for example. What is to stop them from using verified information from one service they provide to track you from another service. From a technical standpoint, there is nothing stopping them. It is perfectly feasible to do this to varying degrees. From a legal and business standpoint, I have no idea. I certainly can’t gain the knowledge from the lawyer-speak of the agreements. I’m sure that many users can’t either.

The article also mentions that it is possible for users to delete search histories, removing them from the future calculated results. Once again, there is nothing from a technical standpoint stopping them from actually keeping that information for their own use, and keeping it associated with your profile for internal use for all eternity. Are they actually doing this though? Keep this in mind, they offer email, personal search, web publisher, web advertiser, desktop search, and many more services. If they are doing this kind of thing, they can have information from your email, your personal computer, all of your searches, etc. It doesn’t end there, they can technically track you as you visit any website that uses any form of Google advertising or statistics packages. Are you starting to get the idea of the reach of Google?

As it stands right now, I am of the opinion that Google could very well have a better understanding of visitors to this site than I could ever hope to have. Yet, I’m the one running this site.

While it is nice to see the the topic of privacy covered, it seems that there are always more questions. And, given the growing number of ways that Google is gathering information on users, the questions are seeming more and more relevant. Remember, I do not know how Google is compiling all of the data, but the fact remains that they have access to hordes of it from a host of areas. I’m simply raising some questions for discussion that many web users may not even be aware exist.

Source: Google Blog

Edit:
I managed to find a somewhat more clear privacy policy, and Google does admit that they may combine data from there many services(GMail, search, etc) when gathering information on users. However, I also managed to find that they will begin to “anonymize our server logs” in the near future. The statement specifically mentions search, but not the other services that Google offers regarding this anonymizing. More can be read here.