Google+, as part of the Google software offering, gathers information about you through web and image searches, searches for blogs and news articles. It also watches which websites you have visited through web analytics and the search results you click.
Many users of Google+ have a Gmail account. Google reads every email sent and received to Gmail. Google also has direct access to every tweet sent and received. If you use Google docs either at work or for personal use, then Google will collect data about usage.
Google also monitors your email contact list and works out the connections between your contacts to show you suggestions of people you might like to add to your Google+ circles.
If you have completed your public profile, then Google also uses this information. If you have clicked on an ad then Google knows which keywords are popular and which ads attract the most clicks. Google even knows which parts of the world you are most interested in if you use Google Earth. All of this data feeds back into its massive data bank.
If you are unhappy about the information that Google is collecting you can configure privacy settings in your Google dashboard. You can check your Gmail stats, have a look at your credit card information, and your web browsing and search queries by date.
There is no way to remove all of your search history with one click. I had to delete each individual search query I had made — right back to 2008.
Another way to stop Google using your data is to stop using any of its products.
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