ContentThat’s funny, I was just about to write saying I expected Google to launch a personal search history feature in the near future. But they beat me to it. Go ahead and sign in here.
The hint was this screen, which started appearing on Gmail earlier in the week:
This was obviously a play to broaden the notion of Gmail (and Google Groups) accounts to extend to all of Google. But here’s the interesting point — they wouldn’t have done it right away if not to offer search history to the user. For Google has always saved your search history — they just didn’t show it to you. Once people started using Gmail (note that the domain is gmail.google.com, not www.gmail.com), they’ve had a cookie that ties the searches to the individual.
In other words, they have been doing this for a while now. The launch of the Search History feature is just a way of giving it back to the user. (And something we’ve obviously been doing since launch over at A9.)
I’m glad to see them add it — it’s a good feature. I’m curious to see how the public reacts to this…
PS: And for those that like A9′s search, but really do want to keep things private, we offer a generic version that does not use cookies. Of course, you can’t personalize that version, but it’s there. Personally, I use the regular A9 site (being a fan of the OpenSearch columns, of course), and toggle history recording with the toolbar.