Google's New 'My Activity' Site: Reassuring That It Knows You More Than What You Think It Does

The internet knows a lot about you. And as one of the most popular service on the web, Google collects a lot of information about its users. To make things easier for them, Google is looking to make it easier for users to control their data throughout its services and their various devices.

And that is with its My Activity page. The feature collects every of your Google Search history, the videos you watched on YouTube, your Google Now cards, your locations, device information, music identification, and practically any others that concern Google.

My Activity also acts as a switch where users can choose to turn on or off specific Google's various data-collecting service. Like for example: Location history.

As for the interface, the service that works on both desktop web and mobile, supports a default "bundled" view that summarizes everything in a way that is easier to catch and visually parse. We know Google knows a lot about us, so here Google wants to make things simple and intuitive. and by dividing them into Now-like cards, the experience of browsing should be easier for those that are already familiar with Google's design.

And also because the list is shown in a chronological timeline with a built-in search feature, users can search for any activity with ease. They can browse and delete anything or everything in a specific range of a particular topic.

My Activity acts like a dashboard to manage things in a way that is easy for even the non-tech users. It's a fairly minimal resource, but users can control what Google has in its storage about them. It's like the company's way to reaffirm that it knows everything. But the whole point of this is to give the power to control privacy, back to users.

Below is a full list of products included in My Activity:

While My Activity is rolling out to users, Google will ask you in upcoming weeks to opt in to the new Web & App Activity as part of their Google account activity controls to use My Activity. Google won't require users to opt in, but will recommend them to do so.

My Activity is Google's way for users so they can control their privacy. While it makes sense for them to have everything under control at one place, Why does Google wants users to opt for another service and not less? Especially after users know about My Activity.

Web & App Activity tracks users' online and habit while using the web and apps. Opting in will enable users to control which kind of advertisements to show up, and across various devices and websites.

For example, if a user doesn't want his significant other to know he has been researching for a gift, opting in for Web & App Activity can prevent any Google-powered ads from showing up across the web. This is essentially useful when the two shares the same device.

The new option also asks if the user wants personalized ads based on age, gender, and search history to show up on third-party sites. By opting in, the user can edit and block ads across his devices as long as its logged in with his Google account.

Google has done this previously. Like for ads shown on Gmail and YouTube. But on those two examples, cookies were used to deliver personalized and relevant ads on other sites. Otherwise, ads are based on factors like location are generally less relevant.

Google isn't forcing users to turn on this ad-tracking feature. The company said that it's continuing to add more information and feature to My Activity. So hopefully, it will get more granular and even more useful with time.