Google launches Web History tool

Google has made its Web History tool available in the UK.

The tool enables users to find websites they have visited in the past, as well as edit or delete items from their web history. It is an opt-in service.

The launch is part of a wider Google personalised-search initiative that the company's privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, has admitted raises privacy issues. Writing earlier this year in the Financial Times, Fleischer said: "Personalised search does raise privacy issues. In order for it to work, search engines must have access to your web-search history. And there are some people who may not want to share that information because they believe it is too personal. For them, the improved results that personalised search brings are not matched by the 'cost' of revealing their web history."

Fleischer argued that Google can handle this privacy issue by asking users if they want to opt in to the service when they open an account.

Google uses the information gathered from users' search histories for marketing purposes.

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