Google is getting their hands on your data for features.

Arriving in my email inbox:

“We are writing to let you know about a change in our service offerings. If you have logged into your account recently, you may have noticed that you can now choose to share your Google Analytics data. By providing data sharing options, we hope to provide you with transparency, control, and new services based on your preferences.”

In an email, from google.com to customers

and then under the sharing options it says:

Anonymously with Google products and the benchmarking service

Enable benchmarking within Google Analytics by sharing your website data in an anonymous form. Google will remove all identifiable information about your website, combine the data with hundreds of other anonymous sites in comparable industries and report aggregate trends in the benchmarking service. Google will also use this data in anonymous form to improve our products and services.

“Industries Trend Map,” ???

I’m surprised I haven’t heard more organized conversations about Google Analytics and what they are doing with our data. (I have been glazing at the “Google is evil” conversation, because it mostly sounds like craziness. But, now I’m interested.)