[LINK] Google Dashboard

[Roger Clarke]

This seems important.  Has anyone checked it out?

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Google Dashboard lifts curtain on stored data
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By: Tom Krazit, Cnet News

Google is proving to be well aware of the uneasiness among the public 
over the increasing amount of data it stores from users of its 
services.

Google is launching Google Dashboard, a service that lets you log 
into a console and see all the personal data that the company 
maintains on a Google Account user across all its products, from 
Gmail and YouTube to Blogger and Picasa. It allows users to log into 
the settings page of their Google account and review links to the 
personal data stored by Google across many of its products from a 
single Web page.

Users can delete data, change privacy settings, and read the privacy 
policies from various accounts on that page, which is scheduled to go 
live Thursday. Google had been prebriefing news outlets on the 
announcement, but a YouTube video outlining the service was somehow 
published on Google's Privacy Channel on YouTube and spotted by the 
Google Operating System blog.

One of the overarching themes with regards to Google this year has 
been the increasing discomfort among both the public and the 
government with the degree to which Google has grown to dominate the 
Internet. With nearly two-thirds of all Internet searches passing 
through its servers and growing numbers of people using its Google 
Docs, Gmail, and YouTube services, Google is a vital gateway to 
information for Internet users.

Google has tried to placate critics, recently emphasizing that it 
tries very hard to let users export any data they enter into one of 
Google's products through the work of the Data Liberation Front. 
Dashboard is another step in that direction as Google tries to 
emphasize that users have control over the data it stores on them.

(Source:<http://tinyurl.com/ycw6gls>)

-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University