The amount of services I use through Google is now summed up in a simple dashboard showing everything. They sum it up as transparency, choice, and control which is a nice way of softening the realization of how much data Google actually collects about you.

Here are the services they list and my usage:

Account – Yes
Alerts – Yes
Blogger – No
Calendar – Yes
Contacts – Yes
Docs – Yes
Friend connect – Yes
Gmail – Yes
Health – No
iGoogle – No
Orkut – No
Picasa – Yes (Paid)
Product Search – Yes
Profile – Yes
Reader – Yes
Talk – Yes
Tasks – Yes
Voice – Yes
Web history – Yes
YouTube – Yes
(other – 30 not yet in dashboard)

So that is 16/20 services that I use, some on a daily basis, and one that I pay yearly for (Picasa).

Like many things, this data has been out there for awhile, just never compiled in one place. The same is true for public records (think real estate transactions) but rarely is it organized and show in one place.

I think there will be the initial reactions to this that Google is collecting too much information. Once the dust settles on that argument, I think people will start to better understand their collective data exhaust from one company, and appreciate it all being organized.

You can easily see your active involvement, or lack thereof, in any service and control the settings for each. Obviously this is something you could do before, but I feel people respond to a centralized dashboard much better than a “settings” area across 20 different applications and services.

What do you think about the Google dashboard? How many services do you use on that list?

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Post from: Eric Friedman
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Google Dashboard