Google's New Privacy Policy

Google's new privacy policy takes effect on March 1, and is mandatory for all Google users. What they have basically done is combine all the many Google services under one umbrella when it comes to their privacy policy. Up until now, Google had over 60 different policies across their many online services. The main idea is to make Google one continuous experience, allowing them to share data from one service, such as Gmail, with other services such as YouTube, Maps, Android, Chrome and many others.

Google's spin on all this is that the new changes will help them personalize content across services for individual users. This just happens to include personalized advertising across Google sites. For instance, Google will be tracking your search history, and based on the topics you search for, Google will be able to present advertising to you when you are using their other services such as Google Docs, Calendar or Picasa, for example. A lot of this boils down to Google being able to gather information about users' search habits and then directing advertisers to which of those users would most likely be interested in their products.

There is a lot of interest in the new Google privacy policy consolidation, including inquires by members of the U.S. Congress and the European Union's data protection authorities, who have asked Google to delay implementation until it can be determined how the changes will affect Google users in the EU.

In response to the growing concerns, Google recently published a letter by Global Privacy Counsel Peter Fleischer in which he stated that the main purpose of the new policy is to combine the more than 70 different rules for Google's wide-ranging services into one that is simpler and more readable. Fleischer went on to write: "Our updated privacy policy makes it clear in one comprehensive document that if a user is signed in we may combine information she has provided from one service with information from other services."

There is some good news for those people who don't want to feel as though they are being watched and followed while using the many Google services — users can continue to use services such as Google search without being logged into an account, or can even create different profiles for different services.