Google Dashboard: Informative, or Pointless?

I briefly mentioned yesterday some concerns regarding privacy, in the context of storing our personal data (documents, spreadsheets, pictures) with Google. The many Google services we use (Gmail, Picasa, Docs, Maps (my maps), etc) can create a sense that Google is infiltrating all aspects of our lives. To make matters worse, Google can collect how we use their applications, and know far more about us that we perhaps would want our own spouse to know.

For example, take Google Maps: with my maps you can create your own favorite spots, save them in a map, and use it later. Essentially, Google might not know for sure where you have been, but it certainly knows where you would like to go or potentially have gone in the past. The issue is altogether more serious with Google Latitude, which could literally follow your every move, if you let it.

Not surpringly, people might get concerned with their personal data and how Google stores it. In an attempt to address this, Google designed “Google Dashboard“, which is a simple interface showing all the different Google services you use (when logged into your account), and how you use them.

Google Dashboard seems only moderately useful to me, because it does not allow you to change your privacy settings for each application directly. Others have also noted that you still need to go deep into the privacy settings for each application separately, and if you do not already know where to find these settings, it is not a given that Google Dashboard is going to be very helpful. The one benefit of Google Dashboard is that it brings all links to each one of the application’s settings pages together in one spot. If you would like to do a complete overhaul of all your privacy settings for each Google application you use, then this would be a handy way of making sure you do not forget one.

However, I do not think Google Dashboard is all it promises to be: it gives the same amount of privacy control as each Google product already does. There is no centralized privacy control that changes the settings for all your Google applications, and it is definitely not telling me anything I did not already know about my usage. Frankly, knowing that I have 8000 messages in Gmail is not shocking to me, and I knowing how many pictures I store on Picasa tells me very little about how Google uses my data.

Nonetheless, it is a handy overview, particularly if you want to see clearly exactly how much you use Google, and how difficult it would be to go without all these great services and applications.