Google Privacy Policy
The new Google privacy policy was released two days ago and now many people are up-in-arms about the increased share of information across all of Google’s platforms. The thing is that most private industries have been doing this with your information for years, at least Google let y0u know upfront about their updated privacy policy. However one of the fallacies of these changes in the Google privacy policy is that there is no option to opt-out.
Google Privacy Policy | Integration
So many are wondering just what information will be shared under the new Google privacy policy and what services are included, The Washington Post reports:
On Tuesday, the search giant announced that it was placing 60 of its Web services under a unified privacy policy that would allow the company to share data between any of those services. (Google Books, Google Wallet and Google Chrome are excluded due to different regulatory and technical issues.) Any user with a Google account — used to sign in to services such as Gmail, YouTube and personalized search — must agree to the policy. Users who don’t want to have their data shared have the option to close their accounts with Google.
So thats the skinny. If you don’t like the Google privacy policy then you can simply delete your Google accounts. Well this has a lot of people upset, because its hard to successfully use the internet for both business and entertainment without using many of Google’s services. Why can’t we just opt-out? Google knows that we need its services so why would they give us the option?
Google Privacy Policy | Openness
Some are applauding Google for being so open with their privacy policy, including some top reps in the privacy department. What many don’t understand is that many people out there just make changes without alerting the public, but now with the Google privacy policy.
Some praised the company for being so open about the changes, including European Commissioner for Justice Vivian Reding. Reding, vice president of the EC, is the continent’s leading advocate for laws on Internet privacy and data protection, and said Google’s move was a step in the right direction.
“Google was quick. Even before the Commission decided on the new European law, Google made the first step in the direction of new privacy rules. I can only applaud the direction,” she said in a statement.
Still many are upset that they can’t choose just what information is shared across different channels. Google says that it is because they want to improve search and other functionalities, but many think that it is all about advertising, with good reason.
Google Privacy Policy | Conclusion
I wanted to leave you with one last quote from Red Tape from MSNBC about the Google privacy policy:
Blah blah blah. If we really cared about protecting our personal information, “password” wouldn’t be a popular password and IT managers wouldn’t have to enforce regularly changed and increasingly complicated log-ins that require both lower-case and capped letters, numbers, some sort of punctuation, and, I predict in the near future, wingdings. What we really want is a fat lady in a painting to guide us through our stuff, like them lucky kids in Gryffindor, but I digress.
Your average technology layperson won’t care about Google’s user data and privacy policy integration until #GoogleIsEvil starts trending on Twitter.
Wow! Those are some strong words. What do you think? Do people really care about the Google privacy policy or are they just following the trend, let us know!
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