Privacy in the digital age is a matter of some concern. One of the things about electronic files is that they’re easy to duplicate and transfer. And lots of companies are storing lots of personal information. After all, they’re using it to market goods and services to you. It’s big business.

That’s why Google’s recent move toward transparency is a big deal. Miguel Helft wrote an article in The New York Times about it. The announcement came at a privacy conference in Spain earlier today. Google will be offering a new service (how many times have I written that in blog posts this year?) called Google Dashboard. All of the information you’ve supplied in your various Google service accounts will be listed there, including Gmail, Picasa, Checkout, Reader and others.

Actually, as Helft pointed out, Google Dashboard isn’t all that revolutionary, because that information was available to the user through the account settings pages on the individual services.