I know, flip side to the paranoia. I think they’re trying to set people’s minds at east by showing how transparent their “data collection” process is and where our information is coming from in their storate:
https://www.google.com/dashboard/
This is what they have to say about Dashboard:
"Right now, the Dashboard focuses on the most popular products that you use when you’re signed in to your Google Account. Also, the Dashboard shows only data that you generate or that Google records that’s specifically associated with your Google Account. For example, searches you perform when you’re signed in to Web History, or a shipping address you’ve stored in Google Checkout.
There are other kinds of data that Google records when you use its services, but which are not associated with your Google Account. To protect your privacy, that data is intentionally kept separate from your Google Account and thus is not visible on this page. Here are a few examples:
* **Server logs**
Like most websites, our servers automatically record the page requests made when users visit our sites. These server logs typically include your web request, IP address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request, and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser. We store this data for a number of reasons, the most important of which are to improve our services and to maintain the security of our systems. We anonymize this log data by removing part of the IP address (after 9 months) and cookie information (after 18 months).
* **Cookies**
When you visit a Google product, Google remembers your preferences (for example, whether to use strict SafeSearch when you search the Web) using small files called cookies, which are stored on your browser. Google separates data that is associated with your browser's cookies and data that is associated with your personal Google Account; since the Dashboard displays data from your Google Account, cookie information is not shown.
* **Interest-based advertising**
Many websites, such as news sites and blogs, partner with us to show ads on their sites. To show ads that are more related to each user's interests, Google associates interest categories to an advertising cookie that's stored in your browser. The interest categories are based on sites you've recently visited and can be viewed, edited and deleted in the Google Ads Preferences Manager. (The Google Ads Preferences Manager also lets you opt out of interest-based ads altogether.)"
