Google remembers everything you have ever searched for

Google has now made it possible for you to export everything that you have ever searched on the site and download it from its servers. In one ZIP file, you can have a time stamped history of every random bit of trivia or thought you’ve ever had; of every restaurant you’ve ever cared to ‘Zomato’; of the times you looked up whether that movie you wanted to see was actually any good.

Writes Jason Koebler for motherboa-rd.vice.com: “It (Google) has a record of the times you’ve looked up hangover cures and searched weird symptoms to perform a self-diagnosis. It knows that you looked up the address to the hospital to visit a loved one and it knows that you didn’t know the address to the funeral home a week later. And it knows every time you didn’t turn on Incognito mode to search for porn.”

Again, this is not necessarily surprising, but it is striking. We know Google uses its connected products and the information it has on you to help target ads and to personalise your experience, which makes using Google feel seamless. Maybe you’re fine with that — lots of people are willing to trade privacy for convenience, or for something that costs them no money.

It’s possible to change your settings so that Google doesn’t link your search history to your account. That’s a start, but Google still logs searches according to IP addresses, which can still be potentially tied back to you.

You can also consider using a company like Duck Duck Go, which runs a “search engine that doesn’t track you”.

Google’s not the only one who uses your search history, of course. The record it has can be and often is subpoenaed by the US government or by law enforcement.

In the first half of last year (more recent data is not yet available), the US requested user information, including search history, from Google 12,539 times. Google complied in 84 per cent of cases. There are concerns that the NSA can tap the data as well. Google says that “only you can see your history”, but how true is that, really?