Remove Google Search History Before New Privacy Policy Takes Effect

Show of hands:

Who is actually going to do this? Who isn't?

The official title of the article is "How to Remove Your Google Search History Before Google's New Privacy Policy Takes Effect", and the writing itself is much more neutral than this submission title.

I'm still not sure why people are afraid of Google's new privacy policy. I understand that there are people who have specific privacy needs, but outside that scope I doubt you have anything to worry about.

It's doubtful at best that Google's "log" of you would become compromised (unless your personal account were compromised, but then this would have been a problem anyways!). It also isn't the case that some Google employee is reading row after row of Google's customer DB snooping on individuals.

Google isn't some unified entity; your data is being manipulated by advertising algorithms to tailor ads for you. Unless you care about a CPU "knowing" your secrets, or you have specific privacy needs/concerns, none of this is a problem.

Maybe someone can surprise me with some good reasons to be concerned, but until then I am trusting Google.

I'm confused. What does this actually mean?

"You can delete information from Web History using the remove feature, and it will be removed from the service. However, as is common practice in the industry, and as outlined in the Google Privacy Policy, Google maintains a separate logs system for auditing purposes and to help us improve the quality of our services for users."

So.... why would I delete this information if Google still keeps it elsewhere? Do I just have no ability to control what data Google collects on me, even if I agree to stop using its services?

As a person who voluntarily enabled web history for personal use, no.

I've just done so, and I intend on keeping Web History turned off. I simply do not derive enough benefit from having this data around for myself (when's the last time you benefited from Web History), and unlike other permanent data such as G+ posts, comments etc I do not self-censor searches that I would like to conduct, so I find it very plausible that someone with more processing power than me could find out more about me than I intend.