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Why has google been so (seemingly) open to wanting people to know how much they (google) knows about them (the searcher)? They recently revamped the UIs, made them easy to navigate, explained everything in detail, added extra reminders to check it out, and now this. What does google gain?

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Trust.

People know that Google depends on their data, so Google depends on a certain level of trust being present so that people are willing to use Google's products. It seems likely that being more transparent will lead to more trust.

I think also it's correctness of the information. Google can only infer so much about you. But for you to curate your own data, primed by them, helps them to better target relevant information and advertisements to you.

It's good and bad I guess. But definitely helps to build trust.

My guess would be to get users to be more open to sharing this type of information, but of course we may never know why they made that decision.

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