Google's Privacy Dashboard
Last week, while I was making sure my privacy settings were fined-tuned after reading all the buzz about
Google Buzz, I stumbled onto a neat feature of Google Accounts that I hadn't seen before. It's called Dashboard, and it's a great concept: most of the information that Google has accumulated about you is collected in one place, and you're given options to manage how you share it all. If you're like me, you have almost a dozen Google services -- Gmail, Picasa, Voice, Reader, Checkout, Alerts, Analytics, etc. Making sure that everything is set up correctly and not inadvertently exposed to the world is an otherwise painful task that is made easy with Dashboard. By scrolling down and glancing at the summaries of your various services, you can make sure that the pictures of Grandma's birthday party aren't visible to the world.
So, despite some other privacy setbacks (but hopefully they have all that worked out with Buzz), I think this is a leap forward for a company to expose the data they have about you and give you choices about what they do with it. Imagine the grocery store doing this with your preferred card or your phone company with the data they collect from your wireless bill (and location data they get from your GPS). It's great when consumers have the choice about how their information is used, and kudos to Google for getting this one right. They still have some work to do given how much info we end up giving them, but definitely a step in the right direction.
