How do I see what Google knows about me?

Use Google Takeout to export your data, and check My Activity and your Ad Settings. You'll see search history, location history, watched videos, and the interest categories Google has inferred about you.

Can I delete what Google has on me?

You can delete activity and turn off some tracking, but deletion is retroactive cleanup, not prevention. The most reliable way to keep the file from growing is to search somewhere that never starts one.

How do I search without adding to my Google profile?

Use an engine that keeps no account, history, or profile. Bare stores none of that, so there is nothing to export and nothing to delete later.

I downloaded everything Google knew about me. The file was terrifying.

On a slow afternoon I clicked the button that lets you download everything Google has stored about you. I expected a tidy summary. I got a file the size of a novel, and it knew me better than my friends do.

What was actually in there

Years of searches, timestamped to the minute. Every place I had been with my phone in my pocket. Videos I had half-watched and forgotten. And the part that stopped me cold: a list of inferred interests, little labels the system had decided described me, some embarrassingly accurate, some I would never admit to out loud.

Search queries going back years, each with a date and time.
A location timeline detailed enough to map my routines.
Inferred age range, interests, and "audience" categories for ads.
Devices, sign-ins, and the rough shape of my daily schedule.

The unsettling part isn't any one line

No single entry was scandalous. The horror was the sum. Read together, the file told a story of a person, their worries, their habits, the 11pm questions they would never ask a human. I had handed all of it over one harmless search at a time.

the quiet truth

You did not decide to build this profile. It assembled itself, invisibly, every time you looked something up. That is exactly why it feels like a violation when you finally see it laid out.

Deleting it is cleanup, not a fix

You can wipe your activity and toggle off some tracking, and you should. But deletion is mopping the floor while the tap is still running. The profile starts refilling the next time you search.

The version where there's no file

The reason Bare exists is so this file never gets written. It keeps no account, no search history, and no behavioral profile, and your query reaches the index through our server rather than your device. There is nothing to export later, because there was never anything to store.

Download your Google data once. Really read it. Then decide how much more of it you want to keep writing.