New privacy policy on Google

On March, 2012, Google is changing its privacy policy.

All the information about you on all your Google profiles will be aggregated in order to create a unique experience through each Google platform. This will “improve” each one’s experience with Google Ads, as well.

Is there any way to avoid it? Apparently, just one:

Users won’t be able to opt out. If they don’t like the change, Google has said, they can avoid signing into their accounts or stop using Google products altogether.

You can check your Ads Preferences on this page and your Web History here. It’s a lot of stuff Google knows about you and it’s used to tailor the advertising messages for you.

How can we try and protect our privacy then? Here’s some advice from Forbes.

Google, myself and I

When you use Google and its many services, how do you identify yourself? According to Google blog, there are a few options: you can be unidentified, use a pseudonymous or be identified.

But there’s far more than that. As someone said, your online identity is determined not only by what you post, but also by what others post about you – whatever it is. When someone googles you, the SERPs are a mix of all this.

As far as June 2011 Google released an improved Dashboard page in order to manage as precisely as possible your web reputation.

Here you can manage the Alert service about you, edit your profile – here’s mine – and link all your profiles around the web.

So far so good, it’s all about you. But there are also some ways to influence SERPs: you can try and remove a page from the SERPs and manage your reputation in an effective way.

Moreover, from the Dashboard you can access and manage pretty much every existing Google service: Analytics, Calendar, Docs, Gmail, Groups, Maps, Picasa, Reader, Youtube, Chrome sync, Adwords, navigation history and so on.

Essential Chrome extensions

Right now on my Chrome browser:

• Gmail Checker tells me how many unread emails I have;
• Chromed Bird tells me how many unread tweets I have. If there are also mentions or DMs it turns green;
• Awesome Screenshot takes screenshots of the whole page or just a selected area;
• Firebug Lite shows the hidden secrets of every webpage;
• Chromeshark has basic controls for the Grooveshark app
• Discotheque is an app by a friend generating a playlist of the videos you’ve seen on Youtube.

Have fun!

20 things I learned

Google set up a nice instance of crossmedia: it’s a website (level 1) holding a book (level 2) about where the web is going (level 3).

What’s a cookie? How do I protect myself on the web? And most importantly: What happens if a truck runs over my laptop?