Google has rolled out two changes that have become controversial in the past few weeks. On January 10 Google began including information from Google + users in its search results for people signed in to their accounts. Then on January 24 the search engine giant announced its new consolidated privacy policy that would place its 60 web services under the same laws and allow the company to share information among any of the services. The new Google privacy policy goes into effect March 1.
Users with a Google account will have their information integrated among all Google products including Gmail, YouTube, and Picasa. Google has already been collecting this information, but the new policy will allow the company to combine data across all its websites to get a deeper understanding of its user. For example, if you reside in Florida and watch a clip of a Miami Heat game on YouTube, you may see NBA ads appear on your Gmail account. Google will be able to tailor search results based on information given on Gmail, Google +, and YouTube to better understand what users mean when they search common terms like “apple” or “pink.”
“In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience,” says the official Google blog. The concept is similar to Facebook’s network of games, messages, and apps all under one user log-in.
However, there has been backlash for the privacy policy updates coming from 8 members of the House of Representatives and SafeGov, a company that conducts cloud computing for government. The congressmen wrote a letter to Google CEO Larry Page, raising the issue that there is no opt out option for the new privacy policy. SafeGov is concerned with how the privacy policy updates will affect the security of government workers. Google has since responded on their Public Policy blog, explaining to users they still have choice and control of their use of services. Will the backlash settle once the privacy policy updates go into effect March 1? Let us know your thoughts.
