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Comment by abrahamsen | Hacker News Reader

http://www.google.com/history

Too long to write it here. I've written some articles for this subject. I am waiting for Google liberating my data also (first, all my google reader favorites!)

http://blog.databigbang.com/google-search-no-api/

http://blog.databigbang.com/the-data-portability-fact-sheet/

http://blog.databigbang.com/extraction-of-main-text-content/

(1) The exportable RSS format is only 'recent', with 'recent' undefined. (In my URL-tampering, I can get about 1 month's data in the exportable format. Unsure if I'm hitting a time or item limit.)

(2) There's no way to get my tracked clicktrails as collected by other Google properties (analytics, adsense, G+, etc.)

Related, but going beyond my original point: Google is also unlikely to ever allow exporting all the signals about me they've collected, and are now using to 'personalize' search results. Fine, they're protecting the proprietary advantage they've built up, with my acquiescence, over time. But so is Facebook.

Re: (1), I can get any results in RSS, even stuff from 2010; the format is implemented as just a view of the normal webpage. Try clicking on "Oldest" on the webpage and then appending "&output=rss" to the URL.

It'd be nicer if they included paging URLs in the RSS itself, though.

Re: (2), while I wish they'd let you collect that, I think there's a difference between data you generate while using their services and data generated elsewhere that you feed them.

(I wonder if a request under the same EU directive that forced Facebook to give you all that stuff back would force Google to give you those trails too)

In addition to what icebraining said, analytics and adsense aren't associated with your account. Adsense (which uses the doubleclick cookie) actually can't be associated with your account under Google's agreement to acquire doubleclick. That's why the ads preferences page is somewhat off base for most people and is empty if you clear or block the cookie or view the page in incognito mode.

I wish people would read privacy policies before they're critical of them...

It doesn't matter to me that they can't link the click data with my Google account due to the arbitrary rules of prior agreements. They're collecting it; they're using it; they should let me have it -- simply by me providing the cookie that they're using as the master key, even if that's not my Google account.

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