Just as they’ve released their quarterly earnings report, Google sneakily launched a new feature today, “Web History”. Offering a web-based alternative to your browsers similar feature, Web History aims to organize what you visit into a concise and easily browsable archive of data.
The feature appeared for me in a small box on Google’s search results and I’m presuming this is where the feature will see its search integration. I’m too paranoid to install it (privacy concerns) however it looks like an intriguing idea from both ends (user and Google). I’m frequently losing websites that I visited earlier in the day or week; sometimes even months after visiting a page I’ll go back and try to find the page in question. Google is looking to eliminate this problem by creating a navigable database of everything you visit, and by throwing Google’s famous search on top of it they are looking to make your net archeology a bit easier.
A similar feature to this was implemented in Google Desktop, allowing users to search through their web history. It is likely that we will see a merging of these two features in the future to prevent redundancy, however Google hasn’t given any word yet. One feature that has been lost (or as they say, renamed) is Search History, the functionality of which is now present in Web History.
I applaud Google for trying to make users’ lives easier, at the same time though we have to wonder what Google is doing with this data. Storing all the world’s information isn’t the most profitable business and Google has ads to make up for this, however it surprises me that ads will continue to cover for these side ventures that take focus away from the original mission of search. I don’t want to suggest Google as an Orwellian Big Brother, however they must be fast approaching some government organizations with the ability to find out about people!
Ultimately Web History is an interesting addition to the Google suite of tools, however I won’t be enabling it. I’m a bit too paranoid (and too forgetful for those times I may want it disabled).
