Everything Google knows about you (and how it knows it)

Even as you search Google, it turns out, Google is also searching you.

Ondrej Prostrednik compiled a list of all the places where Google users can see their personal results. But it’s not that any of this is a secret, necessarily. In fact, in many instances, you’ve signed off on Google’s tracking, whether by signing up for a Google service or opting in on an Android phone. The startling thing is that we forget all this information is being stored, forever, in one centralized place. The small, ordinary act of sending an e-mail or making a search or looking up directions may seem revelatory, in and of itself. But when you compile all those thousands of disparate e-mails and searches and directions over time, which Google does, you end up with something far more intimate -- something not too far removed from a detailed portrait of your life and interests.