If you're a huge fan of Google's voice assistant built into Google Now, then you might be in for a rather nasty surprise, especially if you're vehemently against the government spying on you and sifting through your search history. Google maintains a record of all your activity on its service and also keeps transcripts and recordings of the commands issued via Google Now.
Through Google Now, users can use the command "OK Google" to wake the assistant before issuing a command. It could include everything from adding things to to-do lists on Keep or sending texts to the contacts in one's phone.
Google maintains a record of all the commands issued to one's device at history.google.com. The history includes a recording as well as a transcript with a little time stamp. While this may seem like a gross invasion of privacy, one should also be aware of the fact that one's location history is also stored at the same URL. Other records stored include web and app activity and YouTube watch and search history.
While it's unnerving to see Google keeping track of one's history, it serves an important purpose of being a journal of one's life, allowing users to trace their interactions and activity to the past. All records can be deleted by users on demand too.
Google's connected speaker Google Home is pegged to take interaction to the next level. Much like the Amazon Echo, users will be able to have conversations with the device as well as execute tasks. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said at the Code Conference that users interacting with the device could choose not to maintain a record of their commands and go "off the record" with the device.
