Google Web History

It turns out that Google saves all of one's search history at https://www.google.com/history/ . Google associates this with our GMail accounts, for those of us with GMail, so

• The search history is explicitly tied to the person, and not anonymized.


• We can delete it and "pause" it, which appears to be effectively an opt-out.

This is an opt-out service, not opt-in. How much of a violation of privacy is this "feature," collecting data unbeknownst to the user? That depends:

• How does Google use it?


• How good is Google's security?


• How good is any given user's password security?