Many things are scarier when they are in the shadows. This is especially true when it comes to the ways big companies gather and use data about us.
Google, which gathers a lot of data and to some is increasingly scary, has decided to shine a spotlight on one way it is using all that information. According to a blog post on Wednesday, Google will start explaining how it customizes the search results it displays. Google uses its best guess about where you are and sometimes the history of what you searched for in an attempt to provide more relevant results.
Now a small note in the upper-right-hand corner of the results pages will give some clue that this is happening. In one example, the note reads "Customized for the San Francisco metro area." The text may also have a link to a page that has additional information. In the example of this sort of page, Google showed the Internet Protocol address it used to determine that the search came from San Francisco. It also identified the previous search terms it was taking into account.
In another nice twist, that page has a link to the search results that would have been shown if Google didn't take into account the information about the user. That way people can make some choices about how much information to give Google.
Google doesn't allow users to tell it to disregard their location in its search. But Google won't use its records of what you searched for in the past if you opt out of its Web History feature, which keeps a record of queries that a user can review.
All this is a great step toward helping people understand what Google is doing with their information. But it also raises questions too. What are the other places where...

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