It may come as a bit of a surprise if you did not know all of the info was being kept, but it does make sense for improving your future searches and for Google to better show you ads you are likely to use.
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We said “could” because Google is making this new change an “opt-in” feature.
Users can also turn off the delivery of personalized ads. On the page you will see checkboxes of topics that you can add or remove, sections to enter your age and gender, as well as a switch to toggle ads based on your interests on or off. “If you’re signed in to your Google Account and you have Ads Personalisation on, we will try to apply any muting across all of your signed-in devices when we recognise you as being signed in”, according to Google.
All of the information that’s used is how Google uses its ads services. You can search through anything using keywords or product names and then either delete the information from Google’s records or delve deeper into what it really knows you’ve been up to. Now, though, Google has launched an opt-in service known as “My Activity”, a page where you can see absolutely everything Google knows about you across all your devices in one place.
Facebook runs a similar user privacy program that uses Facebook’s internal data to show ads on the site, but its service is an “opt-out” choice, meaning that all users have been transitioned to the advertising settings by default, without their specific consent. “My Activity” gather all user search history, visited pages, and videos watched. As The Android Police explains, My Activity shows users their “various web, Google product (including all Android and Android apps), and search activities” in a user-friendly timeline. Ad-blocking tools have witnessed a tremendous growth and Google’s My Activity is another way of ad-blocking.
Google will now deliver more relevant ads, if you opt in. If you don’t want some of that data to factor into the ads you see, delete it.
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To opt out of this new form of ad tracking, go to this page. The option (and the notification) is still rolling out and is not yet appearing for all Google Accounts.
