What is wrong with this? Someone who has access to your computer can already do ctrl+H on your computer. Google just added extra verification for myactivity.

A lot of people actually clean their history every now and then.

And Google provides auto-deletion of search history.

Let's call it "auto-disassociation" instead as they surely aren't deleting the search history everywhere, they are simply removing the association between your account and the search history.

"We then begin a process designed to safely and completely delete the data from our storage systems."

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/465

Disclosure: I work for Google

I'm 99% sure that's misleading, as not 100% of "my" data gets deleted. For example, you surely have analytics around what search terms are being used (for Google Trends but probably even more granular data in-house), so when I search for something and then delete my account via that process, do you roll back the metrics on those search terms I used?

What about all the anonymized data, it's surely not removed either, because you don't even have a link to the original author of that data anymore.

I think we both know that Google doesn't actually delete the search history (as how could Google Trends work then?), but instead they make sure the history is not associated to any user anymore. Which is disassociation rather than deletion.

We're being wordy technical so I'll join.

I think it's correct to call this a deletion. Assuming the anonymization happened correctly (for this argument, let's say it did).

Namely, I disagree that the anonymized constitutes "your data" now and it was disassociated at the time of inclusion of the "pool". You may have generated it, but there's no way of knowing that you or anyone else generated that data. There's literally no way to show proof of claim for that dataset - otherwise it not anonymous.

Because of that, I think Google can claim they are deleting your data accurately while still maintaining usage analytics.

So never ever search your own name or anything that could personally be used to identify you is the lesson I guess.

I think it's fair to make a distinction between "deleting data" and "erasing the past".

abraham. What about search log data? Based on the search log data you could easily map back my searches to my account (IP address and search query). Is the log data also deleted?

I was thinking the same, like why weren't they checking it was actually me before this.

If you are logged in on a device, then somoene can see all your emails. Is the history of all your searches more sensitive than your emails? Perhaps, but it's not 100% obvious where to draw the line. The main determinant is probably that people check their history legitimately so rarely that re-auth is a small burden.

This is for devices already logged in. So if your phone is unlocked or your browser open.