veen, what do you think? Is there anything significant about this launch? I'm not sure what to make of it yet.
Well, I mostly found it interesting because it shows your digital footprint and Google's panopticon so eerily well. Even when I thought I had most of the privacy settings turned to paranoid, I still have more than 400 items a day on that activity log just from using Chrome and using an Android phone. I, for example, didn't know that Google stored the amount of times I looked at Whatsapp. I don't really understand why they or any advertiser would care.
Every time you open an app it's an opportunity to get you to look at something that might make you buy something later on down the line. Regardless of whether or not that space is being used for advertising, it displays a trend in behavior. I don't really understand why they or any advertiser would care.
I have nothing since October of 2014 and very little before that. Not sure if this is not working for me.
That's a very doom-and-gloom way of thinking about it. Personally, if I'm going to be shown ads, I'd rather they be something potentially interesting instead of constantly being reminded of the random crap the average person apparently buys. Turning these things off out of privacy concerns is a pipedream anyway. If the authorities want to know something about you, they will. Best way to remain anonymous is to be uninteresting and disappear in the sea of data. Going out of your way to (try to) retain some privacy actually makes you interesting and more likely to be spied upon.
This needs to be used in conjunction with Google Takeout. I see "No Activity" listed on my Google account, yet Takeout always shows a small amount of content they have stored. I've been using Takeout to see what I need to delete from Google... in some cases since two accounts have the data, I can't remove everything since they want to make sure I'm aware it's still in their systems stored by someone else. EDIT: Looks like they updated the interface for Takeout to just be an account screen, somewhere in there you should be able to see your data.