Download Your Google Search History, and/or Delete It!
Google offers a way to view, download, and delete the data its collected on your searches
In January Google quietly rolled out the capability to view your entire search history with the online service, download a copy of it, and even to delete it from Google's servers. The new feature wasn't widely reported online until earlier this month when an unofficial Google blog publicized it.
You can check out your search history here, including web and image searches, and links and images you clicked on as a result. There's also an option to download under settings (the gear button on the top left of the page), as well as one to "remove items," including the ability to remove your recent search history or your entire search history.
I first saw this story on a site called Your News Wire, which led the story this way:
Are you worried about your privacy? Does the fact that Google collects information about you give you the creeps. While many members of the global community are angry about how much information the major online and computer companies collect on you, what if there was a way to combat and stop it. Even if it was a small part of it?
It's important to remember pretty much all the data Google has on us was voluntarily handed over by customers. For the vast majority of its highly popular service, Google is free to the end user. Data collection, which helps, for example, serve ads tailored to the viewer, is part of the way Google remains profitable and able to offer its services for free. It's a good deal, but also one anyone is free to refuse. Not so with data collected by the government, which is also unlikely to ever give you a website where you can look at some of the information it's collected on you and choose to delete it.