Google is so fixed in minds as search powerhouse that it gets hard to keep perspective on how much different products and services they offer overall. And how much of your data gets in there.
Google Dashboard is single-page overview of what of your data Google has.
What it does
Dashboard is essentially long list of Google services that provides highly structured information, including:
- type and amount of data stored in specific service;
- date of last actions (if relevant);
- links to control and/or settings pages for service;
- links for privacy policy and help information;
- special icon marks data that is publicly available.
Strong features
Dashboard is essentially extensive and interactive privacy policy. Where it is usual to provide legal write-off Google gives you dynamic and useful overview.
For example it had reminded me that I joined some sites with Google Friend Connect as test long time ago and never did anything there. These are things that you won’t happen to remember and act on without such reminder as Dashboard is.
Some items are especially impressive. It rocked that it showed name of my mobile phone and last time I synced it to Google. I don’t think this bit of information is available other than in Dashboard at all.
Downsides
On technical side Dashboard has some hiccups.
Plenty of services are not fully integrated and simply listed at the bottom of the page. In my case most of them are from Labs, but it also includes such relatively major services like FeedBurner and Google Wave.
For supported services sometimes data doesn’t seem to be linked correctly. For example it shows I am subscribed to one Google Group, but link there is broken and I can’t find confirmation anywhere else in settings.
Overall
Simple and excellent data and privacy overview that it worth visiting not only once, but on regular basis.
Link https://www.google.com/dashboard/
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