Google announced earlier this week that individual users would now have a consolidated way to access all data they have allowed the company to store for them in its many different products via a single new interface, dubbed the Dashboard. Users can also control privacy settings from this central location, greatly easing the amount of effort required to bring loose threads of personal data back under some semblance of control. This effort comes as privacy advocates have increasingly expressed concern over the level of detail Google has been able to amass on individuals as it has requested (and they have willingly provided) different pieces of information about themselves to different services under its control, detail which can be assembled into a surprisingly accurate profile.

Whether or not Dashboard will mollify privacy advocates remains to be seen. But I wonder if a similar effort, aimed toward corporate users, could help the company with its efforts at bringing business customers into the Google services fold.

Security consistently comes up as one of the top concerns companies have when considering the implementation of cloud or SaaS computing efforts, anything that promises to put large amounts of company data outside the immediate control of its own servers. Many people have asserted, including myself, that data stored on Google's server is just as safe, and probably safer, than data kept within the average corporate environment, which doesn't have nearly the security budget that Google or other top-tier providers can amass. It seems that the problem is more one of perception than reality, and if this is indeed the case, then a tool of this sort could do wonders to improve corporate perceptions of Google's security and privacy efforts. It wouldn't be identical to Dashboard, of course, with its emphasis on personal privacy; rather, it might show more detail about what corporate data Google stores, where it is kept, and what permissions it is held under. I think the more legitimate concern about cloud storage of corporate information is not that it is insecure in the traditional breaking-and-entering context, but rather that it becomes, by design, very easy to share that information outside the business. The sharing usually happens at a relatively low level, but the concerns of corporate managers are unassuaged by the conventional tools that manage this on an individual basis.

Providing those managers with their own control panel and an overview of what all is out there might go some ways toward convincing them it is all manageable. Putting tools into the mix that would allow them to instantly assert control over the information would be one step better.