Every search you ever made on Google is now available to view, reveals blog

Now anyone with a Google account can see themselves as Google sees them, thanks to a little-publicised feature

A blog has revealed a feature that allows Google users to download their entire search history.

Google Operating System, which describes itself as an "unofficial blog that watches Google's attempts to move your operating system online since 2005", has revealed a little-known feature that allows users of Google's search engine to download their entire search history.

Not all searches are available to view - just those associated with a Google account. So users must have been logged in to their Google account at the time of running the search, and also the "save search history" feature must have been turned on, as it is by default.

However, given that Google has been very successful in getting people to sign up, making a Google account a prerequisite for using many of the firm's other services and features as well as for the popular Android mobile operating system, many users will be logged in most of the time on PC or mobile. Therefore it is likely that the majority search results will be available for users to view.

To access their search history, account holders need to log in at Google's support pages with their Gmail account. It is also possible to download this and other information held by Google to a .zip file and have that archive emailed to the Gmail account, and web searches and other information can be deleted - although whether or not Google retains that information elsewhere is not immediately obvious.

This feature is part of a wider programme called Google Takeout, which the company says is designed to enable users to transfer their data away from Google so it can be deployed with another services.

"It's important that you can access your Google data when you want it, where you want it - whether is it to import it into another service or just create your own copy for your archives," the firm says.

Many would welcome these apparent steps towards greater transparency and control, but it does prompt the question why the search giant has not advertised the feature more widely, given that Takeout has been running for four years.

Quite possibly Google fears that once users see the quantity of data held, as well as as its highly personal nature they will start to worry whether trading such information, from which personal politics, health or sexuality could easily be inferred, in exchange for personalised ads and features is worth it (leaving aside the possibility of those records being hacked or handed over to the authorities on demand).

The fact that their personal data is no longer "out of sight and out of mind" might just be enough to send them running to a non-tracking search engine such as DuckDuckGo.