If you're amazed -- and maybe even a little alarmed -- about how much Google seems to know about you, brace yourself. Beginning Thursday, Google will operate under a streamlined privacy policy that enables the Internet's most powerful company to dig even deeper into the lives of its more than 1 billion users.
Google says the changes will make it easier for consumers to understand how it collects personal information, and allow the company
to create more helpful and compelling services. Critics, including most
of the country's state attorneys general and a top regulator in Europe,
argue that Google is trampling on people's privacy rights in its
relentless drive to sell more ads.
Here's a look at some of the key issues to consider as Google tries to learn about you.
Q: How will Google's privacy changes affect users?
A: Google Inc. is combining more than 60 different privacy policies
so it will be able to throw all the data it gathers about each of its
logged-in users into personal dossiers. The information Google learns
about you while you enter requests into its search engine can be culled
to suggest videos to watch when you visit the company's YouTube site.
Users who write a memo on Google's online
word processing program, Docs, might be alerted to the misspelling of
the name of a friend or co-worker a user has communicated with on
Google's Gmail. The new policy pools information from all
Google-operated services, empowering the company to connect the dots
from one service to the next.
Q: Why is Google making these changes?
A: The company, based in Mountain View, Calif., says it is striving
for a "beautifully simple, intuitive user experience across Google."
What Google hasn't spent much time talking about is how being able to
draw more revealing profiles about its users will help sell advertising
-- the main source of its $38 billion in annual revenue.
One reason Google has become such a big advertising network: Its
search engine analyzes requests to figure out which people are more
likely to be interested in marketing pitches about specific products and
services. Targeting the ads to the right audience is crucial because in
many cases, Google only gets paid when someone clicks on an ad link.
And, of course, advertisers tend to spend more money if Google is
bringing them more customers.
Q: Is there a way to prevent Google from combining the personal data it collects from all its services?
A: No, not if you're a registered user of Gmail, Google Plus,
YouTube, or other Google products. But you can minimize the data Google
gathers. For starters, make sure you aren't logged into one of Google's
services when you're using Google's search engine, watching a YouTube video
or perusing pictures on Picasa. You can get a broad overview of what
Google knows about you at http://www.google.com/dashboard , where a
Google account login is required. Google also offers the option to
delete users' history of search activity.
It's important to keep in mind that Google can still track you even
when you're not logged in to one of its services. But the information
isn't quite as revealing because Google doesn't track you by name, only
through a numeric Internet address attached to your computer or an
alphanumeric string attached to your Web browser.
Q: Are all Google services covered by the privacy policy?
A: No, a few products, such as Google's Chrome Web browser and mobile
payment processor Wallet, will still be governed by separate privacy
policies.
Q: Is Google's new privacy policy legal?
A: The company has no doubt about it. That's why it's repeatedly
rebuffed pleas to delay the changes since announcing the planned
revisions five weeks ago. But privacy activists and even some legal
authorities have several concerns.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy rights group,
sued the FTC in a federal court in an effort to force the FTC to
exercise its powers and block Google's privacy changes. A federal judge
ruled the courts didn't have the authority to tell the FTC how to
regulate Google. The FTC says it is always looking for evidence that one
of its consent orders has been violated.
Earlier this week, the French regulatory agency CNIL warned Google CEO Larry Page
that the new policy appears to violate the European Union's strict
data-protection rules. Last week, 36 attorneys general in the U.S. and
its territories derided the new policy as an "invasion of privacy" in a
letter to Page.
One of the major gripes is that registered Google users aren't being
given an option to consent to, or reject, the changes, given that they
developed their dependence on the services under different rules. In
particular, people who bought smartphones
running on Google's Android software, and signed two-year contracts to
use the devices, may have a tough time avoiding the new privacy policy.
They could switch to non-Google services, but those typically don't work
as well on Android software. Or they could buy a different smartphone
and pay an early-termination penalty.
Q: What regulatory power do government agencies have to change or amend the privacy changes?
A: The U.S. Federal Trade Commission gained greater oversight over
Google's handling of personal information as part of a settlement
reached last year. Google submitted to the agreement after exposing its
users email contacts when it launched a now-defunct social networking
service called Buzz in 2010. The consent order requires Google's
handling of personal information to be audited every other year and
forbids misleading or deceptive privacy changes.
Google met with the FTC before announcing the privacy changes.
Neither the company nor the FTC has disclosed whether Google satisfied
regulators that the revisions comply with the consent order.
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