Twitter Reviews: Google Dashboard sparks privacy debate

Posted by Lisa Wyczesany on 11/09/09 • Categorized as Technology, Web

Google’s Official Blog recently announced the release of Dashboard – an all in one place to manage and view data stored in a Google Account. Google says that Dashboard “summarizes data for each product used” and provides “direct links to control personal settings.”

Many Twitter users look past any privacy concerns and agree that Dashboard is a useful tool for managing products such as gmail, YouTube, igoogle, and maps.

dan_munz (Washington, DC) Forget Wave: This is the best thing google’s done lately | Google Dashboard lifts curtain on stored data http://tinyurl.com/yfdtjfo 05 Nov 2009 from API

Casieg (Boston, MA) Wow…Google Dashboard is kind of awesome…I forgot I had all of those things! Now, I’ll just clear everything so Google can’t stalk me 05 Nov 2009 from TweetDeck

mpietropoli (Rovigo, Italy) @MediaStorm At Google they know your mail too. What’s the matter? It’s just a dashboard. I can’t understand why I must be worried… 06 Nov 2009 from TweetDeck in reply to MediaStorm

nhancox (Texas) Google Dashboard was a great move by Google. I think it will really help make people feel safer about their information. It’s quite helpful. 08 Nov 2009 from Tweetie

Others are not convinced that Dashboard is as private as it says it is and are somewhat distraught at the amount of user information stored in one place.

randyjensen (Undisclosed) Looking at Google’s Privacy Dashboard, realizing I have no privacy. 05 Nov 2009 from TweetDeck

Martinmalone77 (Manchester) Going to the doctors this morning for a checkup, can’t they just access my ‘Google dashboard’ seems to know everything about me!! 06 Nov 2009 from Tweetie

yogeshmalik (Gurgaon, India) Realized that new http://google.com/dashboard knows too much about me. I have browsing history for last 5 years. this is great. 07 Nov 2009 from HootSuite

FrankMullens (Agoura Hills, California) Google Dashboard: Transparent, maybe. Private? Not so much http://bit.ly/mBe5D 09 Nov 2009 from web

Soliah (Sydney, Australia) Oh Google Dashboard. I use way too many Google products. They own all my information 09 Nov 2009 from Tweetie

A short video made by Google explaining the benefits of Dashboard was included in an article by Fast Company – Fast Company sums up the argument nicely by saying that Dashboard is a step forward, but doesn’t offer much in genuine control.