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A service to add convenience and perhaps also some peace of mind to the conspiracy theorists?

Google has announced 'Dashboard', a centralised location to view all the data Google stores in association with your account. From it you will have access to over 20 products and services including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Web History, Orkut, YouTube, Picasa, Talk, Reader, Alerts, Latitude and more.

"Over the past 11 years, Google has focused on building innovative products for our users," said the company in an official blog post. "Today, with hundreds of millions of people using those products around the world, we are very aware of the trust that you have placed in us, and our responsibility to protect your privacy and data.... In an effort to provide you with greater transparency and control over their own data, we've built the Google Dashboard. Designed to be simple and useful, the Dashboard summarizes data for each product that you use (when signed in to your account) and provides you direct links to control your personal settings."

"The scale and level of detail of the Dashboard is unprecedented, and we're delighted to be the first Internet company to offer this — and we hope it will become the standard," it added.

Despite these good intentions I actually found the information in Google Dashboard to be fairly limited. There's no he lives at ..., enjoys x, y and z, is six feet tall with green eyes and like a drink on a Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays Fridays. Instead it is more like a summary page of your user submitted data and the most recent things you've done on each service. Then again, perhaps that is all Google stores. Darn, the conspiracy theorists are never going to buy that...

In related news Google has also launched 'commerce search', a site specifically designed for online retailers to create their stores within a dedicated Google framework. The aim is to give users and retailers a clean, fast and search friendly site which, while clearly not designed primarily for the likes of Amazon or M&S, should help smaller businesses improve their online experience.

Not that you'd ever need anything other than TrustedReviews Shopping of course...

Links:
Google Dashboard Official Blog Post
Google Commerce Search

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