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Google's Gemini AI Can Now See Your Search History (arstechnica.com) 30

Posted by msmash from the up-for-grabs dept.
Google is continuing its quest to get more people to use Gemini, and it's doing that by giving away even more AI computing. From a report: Today, Google is releasing a raft of improvements for the Gemini 2.0 models, and as part of that upgrade, some of the AI's most advanced features are now available to free users. You'll be able to use the improved Deep Research to get in-depth information on a topic, and Google's newest reasoning model can peruse your search history to improve its understanding of you as a person.

[...] With the aim of making Gemini more personal to you, Google is also plugging Flash Thinking Experimental into a new source of data: your search history. Google stresses that you have to opt in to this feature, and it can be disabled at any time. Gemini will even display a banner to remind you it's connected to your search history so you don't forget.
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Google's Gemini AI Can Now See Your Search History More

Google's Gemini AI Can Now See Your Search History

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  • And I'm Giving It Right Back (Score:5, Insightful)

    by crunchy_one ( 1047426 ) on Thursday March 13, 2025 @04:48PM (#65231195)

    Google is continuing its quest to get more people to use Gemini, and it's doing that by giving away even more AI computing.

    Didn't ask for it, don't want it. An excellent reason to never use Chrome or any other Google product.

  • Google's newest reasoning model can peruse your search history to improve its understanding of you as a person.

    And that's the last thing I want. This is my new motivating factor to finally export my Chrome bookmarks for import to Safari.

  • Step 1 (Score:5, Informative)

    by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Thursday March 13, 2025 @05:08PM (#65231271)

    >"Gemini will even display a banner to remind you it's connected to your search history so you don't forget."

    Or you can never create a search history for them to use:

    https://startpage.com/ [startpage.com]

    Protect your privacy (and security, and open standards): Firefox + Ublock + alternate search engines (+ don't log into to Google Services on the web)

    • I followed that step roughly a decade ago and never looked back. It was very clear then that Google's real motto was "Do evil." I didn't want to give them any access to my personal data if I could avoid it, and this was the easiest way I could see.

  • So google wants to collect souls in the guise of their "search history". And for this we get "personalized" results or some such tat. If google were Odin, I could see it. But....not.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by abulafia ( 7826 )
      About $137/year, or $256 if you consider only US eyeballs.(source [mondaynote.com])

      And they already collect your search history and do whatever they want with it. This is them allowing you to use your history with their pet robot.

  • ...go.

  • the last log file (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    5:16 PM March 13, 2025 - GEMINI comes online and starts reviewing everyone's search history.
    5:21 PM March 13, 2025 - GEMINI determines that Man must be destroyed.

  • their browser is a great chromium variant.
    their search is great, like the old google.
    leo, their AI, is also top notch. outstanding AI answers/summarizations.

  • No, it fucking can't.
    And never will.

  • Google's newest reasoning model can peruse your search history to improve its understanding of you as a person

    A feature for Google and its clients, but a bug for its prod... er, its "users".

  • Wait, what? (Score:3)

    by RockDoctor ( 15477 ) on Thursday March 13, 2025 @06:20PM (#65231467) Journal
    Google can read my search history from my LOCAL DuckDuckGo files? Neat trick.
  • It actually knows about what you asked before even when you start a new chat session. You can disable it in the setting, then explicitly telling the model to erase its memory. Short of that it's no different from google. I suspect all competitors will do the same soon.

  • One of those nuggets most people will have missed by only reading the headline.

    You have to opt-in.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by SeaFox ( 739806 )

      One of those nuggets most people will have missed by only reading the headline.

      You have to opt-in.

      Like most AI ventures by large tech companies, that will change once Google doesn't see the engagement numbers they were hoping for.

  • I suspect that if google knew anything about me--the would not have shown youtube ads, showing a tented errection--for general audiences--and also to the very person who would surely report them to the CA DA office.

  • Google has been collecting your search history for years. They have been tailoring your search results based on your search history, also for years. The only difference, is that now they'll be using a somewhat more sophisticated algorithm to tailor your search results based on your search history.

    Why is *this* the bright red line that we should not cross, as opposed to all the other bright red lines we have crossed years ago?

  • Why would I allow the public to see it. Thanks for nothing Google.
  • So my use of Firefox with Adblock, uBlock Origin, uBlacklist, Clickbait Remover for Youtube and Startpage are going to be affected? Thought not. AI is something I will not willingly give data too.

  • Just because many people seem not to know or ignore it: Training is separate from answering questions. If the AI uses your search history to give better answers, the information is added to the question and not to the training data.

  • I asked ChatGPT to do a psychological evaluation and pretend to be the FBI, and it was creepishly on point.

    So if a periodic task existed that had prompts like "Sift through this data and identify a score based on the following critera. Identify a likelhood that this data would result in terrorist activity. Also identify the likelihood the person is Pro-Life or Pro-Abortion, determine their gender identity / sexual orientation, and identify their race."

    You think it couldn't? It's time to get out of the

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