I too am torn. I’m lazy. And I love convenience.
After being highly suspicious of motives of which I’m sure I should have been highly suspicious of, I realised how useful it is to use Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Drive. I use Google Maps. I use Google Analytics, and a ton of their other services which I can’t think of right now. They’re free, they’re easy and they work.
I know, I know, it’s a huge marketing company that only offers you all these free services in order to use your data to know everything and I mean everything about you, all the better to sell stuff to you and make sure you’re being a good boy according to the US midwestern idea of what good and bad is, but hey. Convenience.
And let’s not forget that this is the selfsame company who had as their catchphrase, “Don’t be evil”. And then…took it away. I mean, if you’re going to parade a catchphrase, company motto, whatever, as “Don’t be evil”, all well and good. But it’s really not a good look if you then decide to stop using it. You know?
Anyway, cut to the chase, I hear you say, and I will, right here, right now.
Google, as we all know, follows you around the web, wherever you go. They track everything you do, their bots analyse you to an nth degree. Maybe you’re okay with that, maybe not. If you’re not then I would highly recommend using a search enginie like DuckDuckGo (I tried it out, sceptically, and was surprised to find that it works just as well as Google) – and Firefox as your browser (does things like the “Facebook Container” – which stops Facebook following you everywhere around the web). For example.
But this article is for people who are kind of like aah like you know in the end whatever, people who are also perhaps torn, lazy and just love convenience a little too much.
Because Google has provided a way for you to delete your search history, your Youtube history, your location history, you name it. That’s what they say, anyway.
To do that – and I highly recommend doing it from time to time – just go to https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity, locate the three dots in the top right hand side of the window within the window that you see, click it, and you’ll see varying options – to delete things just from today, from last week, or from forever.
And there you have it.
No, don’t thank me. Just, you know, be free 🙂
This is the first of our Life Online series of articles, dedicated to things like privacy, innovation and futurism. And…you know, that kind of thing. More to come, is what I’m saying.
