Google Dashboard centralises privacy settings

Google has launched Dashboard, which enables users of its products - such as Gmail, YouTube and Blogger - to centrally manage privacy settings and monitor how much data is stored on Google's servers.

In this four minute interview, Alan Noble, engineering director at Google Australia, explains that Google Dashboard is designed to make it easy to visualise all the data in your various Google applications.

"The dashboard is a really convenient management page where you can see all the Google services. We haven't actually consolidated all the data into one spot, we are providing a report of what products you are using and the data associated with those products," he said.

According to Noble, Dashboard will not only make it much easier to visualise how much data you are "sharing" with the search giant, it will also let you control your privacy settings.

"For example, if you use Google Talk, you can very easily go on or off the record, Google talk has always had this feature but it is on the privacy settings tab of Google talk. Now, from the dashboard you can do it all from one place - and that is true for other products too," said Noble.

However, Noble said not all Google products were Dashboard-enabled.

"We have started with the big data users - Gmail, Picassa, Blogger - and over time we will launch more and more products.

"We really think it is important we have an easy way for users to manage data. Trust is absolutely essential for us. Without user trust we have nothing so we want to make it really easy for users and this is a step in that direction," added Noble.