Google 'Account Activity' Jumps Into Personal Analytics 64
An anonymous reader tips news of a new feature announced by Google today: Account Activity. Writing on their official blog, Google's Andreas Tuerk said, "If you sign up, each month we’ll send you a link to a password-protected report with insights into your signed-in use of Google services. For example, my most recent Account Activity report told me that I sent 5 percent more email than the previous month and received 3 percent more. An Italian hotel was my top Gmail contact for the month. I conducted 12 percent more Google searches than in the previous month, and my top queries reflected the vacation I was planning: [rome] and [hotel]." You may remember from earlier this month that Stephen Wolfram began showing some of the extensive personal analytics data he has collected over the past 20 years.
Re:Belly button contemplation (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow. Just wow.
I opted in with enthusiasm for the following reasons:
1. I like statistics. I work with statistics, reports, business analytics, data mining so it's well within my area of interest.
2. The report (as far as I have seen) tells me what I've done and allows me to make things more efficient.
3. It provides me with insight of how much does Google know about me. It knows a lot. Do I care? No, not really. I'm not yelling for privacy for the sake of privacy.
(that last point can lead to a really--REALLY long discussion though, so I'd better stop now before it's too late)