Google Dashboard: Good–But More Explanation, Please

By  |  Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 9:26 am

Google DashboardJust how much Google do you have in your life? Now Google is giving you a tool to help answer that question: Google Dashboard, which puts personal information relating to twenty Google services you may be using on one page.

Dashboard includes everything from the number of conversations in your Gmail inbox to how many people are following you on Google Reader to the most recent task you completed with Google Tasks. Icons indicate if you’ve made a piece of information (such as your age) public; links let you go to the originating services and manage settings relating to them. It puts scads of information about you in one place, which is why you need to enter a password to get to it–even if you’re already logged in.

Here’s what Dashboard tells me about my usage of Google Docs:

Google Docs

And here it tells me that I’ve shared an album on Orkut (which was startling to hear, since I don’t remember ever using Orkut–but I figure Google has a better memory than I do):

Google Orkut

The level of information that Dashboard provides is curiously inconsistent–the Gmail section is so granular that it tells me exactly when I last received a piece of spam and what the title was, but the Contacts one merely notes how many contacts I have. I’m not sure if there’s an overarching philosophy about what info goes into the Dashboard, or whether different Google teams simply had varying philosophies.

Dashboard could use some more explanation. I already knew that I use a ton of Google services and they know a lot about me, so seeing it all in one place was more entertaining than scary. As long as I’m looking at the big picture, I’d like to get more information on exactly what Google does (and doesn’t do) with my personal information–but Dashboard’s help is pretty perfunctory, and there’s no concise data-point-by-data-point disclosure.

Unless you don’t have a Google Account–and if you don’t, you’re surely not reading this–your Dashboard is here. If you check it out, let us know what you think. And here’s Google’s video introduction:

 

 
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6 Comments For This Post

  1. Barbara Krasnoff Says:
    November 5th, 2009 at 9:32 am

    Interestingly, I also found an Orkut album with no photos in it that I don’t remember starting (but I’ve played with so many Google apps, I figured I’d signed up for one at some point in time…)

  2. dale Says:
    November 5th, 2009 at 9:36 am

    no real excitent, and strange levels of data. Which tells me, google products aren’t built with the ability to use the same internal API to gather info. Or each product is built in its own world and isn’t compatible with a central database. I would have guessed every application would have connected in some way to a top end database, or at least talk to each other. Seems very un-google.

  3. Ryan Says:
    November 5th, 2009 at 9:49 am

    I never started an Orkut account either and have an album that is shared with everyone. An album that I never created, which contains no pictures. They must have auto created accounts for everyone in this application.

    From a privacy protection standpoint, I like the dashboard. For those who live and publish online, it would seem to be useful beyond my perspective.

  4. Tech Says:
    November 5th, 2009 at 4:15 pm

    It’s basically a long list of Google products you’ve signed up for.

  5. Harsh Agrawal Says:
    November 7th, 2009 at 7:59 pm

    Atleast I find it good..
    I dont remember how many Google services I have signedup and now I have a
    admin space from where I can see and control all my stuff associated with Google.

  6. Google Terminator Says:
    November 15th, 2009 at 5:41 pm

    Interesting information on the dashboard but as of yet I have found no use for it. I wonder what made Google decide to build this little tool…