Download your Google search history for some amusing reading

Google collects a lot of data about its users -- a lot of data. Much of this data is used for advertising purposes but there's also a lot of data that you might want to make use of yourself... even if it's only for entertainment.

All those searches you performed when you were drunk? These are now available to download! Brace yourself for what could turn into hours of amusement -- or possibly sphincter tightening embarrassment -- as a new addition to Google History means you can grab a copy of this history for posterity, and gain some interesting stats into the bargain.

Pay a visit to Google History and you can browse through your entire search history online; it's kind of like an online version of your browser history. This itself is nothing new, but if you click the gear button to the upper right of the page, a new Download option will be visible. An interesting warning, headed "Please read this carefully, it's not the usual yada yada" will appear suggesting that you don't download this data on a public computer.

Hit create archive and... sit back and wait. You'll receive an email in due course letting you know when your archive is ready to download. It might take a little while to appear, but as you have a bit of time to kill, why not spend it delving into your history? I discovered that I've performed 33,246 searches whilst signed into my Google account and my top search term -- rather inexplicably as I'm not a Transformers fan -- was "tfw2005".

When you've spent a few minutes having a bit of a giggle about your search history, your archive should be ready. It's provided in JSON format and you can use the tool of your choice to perform analysis on the data.

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