The initiative is called Google Dashboard. For Google users who have wondered what data is stored in conjunction with their Google accounts, Dashboard offers a new level of transparency. Google Dashboard lets users see what data the search engine is storing and offers some control over how it's used. Users can even delete some data.

Google software engineer Alma Whitten, Google product manager Yariv Adan, and Google Vice President of Search Products and User Experience Marissa Mayer made the Dashboard announcement on the company's blog.

Moving Beyond Privacy

The trio pointed to Google's 11-year focus on building innovative products for users and how hundreds of millions of people are using those products around the world. Google, they wrote, is very aware of the trust that consumers have placed in the company and its responsibility to protect user privacy.

"In the past, we've taken numerous steps in this area, investing in educating our users with our Privacy Center, making it easier to move data in and out of Google with our Data Liberation Front, and allowing you to control the ads you see with interest-based advertising," they wrote. "Transparency, choice and control have become a key part of Google's philosophy and today, we're happy to announce that we're doing even more."

Google Dashboard is the "even more." It offers more transparency and more control. Google said the Dashboard is designed to be simple and useful. It summarizes data for each product that consumers use when they are signed in to their account and provides direct links to control personal settings.

Setting an Industry Standard

Google is the first Internet company to offer this level of transparency into how user data is used and is calling for the practice to become an industry standard. At launch, Dashboard covers more than 20 products and services, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Web History, Orkut, YouTube, Picasa, Talk, Reader, Alerts and Latitude.

"The Dashboard is very useful and will address some of the privacy-related criticism that Google has faced," said Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. "Beyond this it offers convenience to end users and also exposes Google services and tools that people may not have been aware of. Thus it serves several objectives for Google."

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have all faced fire from privacy advocates. Will Google's move to appease privacy critics work? That remains to be seen.

Google's often-expressed viewpoint is that all data retention is a balance between user privacy and trust on the one hand, security and innovation on the other. Google has argued that storing data like IP addresses for a time is crucial to make improvements to search quality, improve security, fight fraud, and reduce spam.