Google Privacy Changes: For the better?

Google announced a new update to its privacy policy recently that may (or may not) be an improvement. The new change “allows” Google to combine our information and history across one large channel, effective March 1.

Google’s new policy combines 60 different policies across multiple Google avenues into one main privacy policy. To the average user this means, instead of signing-up and agreeing to the various terms for different products (Calendar, YouTube, Gmail, etc.), users just have sign-up with “Google” as a whole.

As they often do Google created a meaningless, but fun video to summarize the new changes.

“What does this mean in practice? The main change is for users with Google Accounts. Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.” – http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/updating-our-privacy-policies-and-terms.html

With the recent release of “Search Plus Your World”, this announcement of combining information is not that big of a surprise. The up-side is that Google can target your search, visits, and trends even more, thus, showing you even more relevant ads and search results.

The technology media community is quick to point out this is against Google’s “No Evil” philosophy. However, that’s coming from an industry eager to watch Google fall. TechCrunch.com points out the problems with the “no evil” argument.

“What specifically is evil about this particular action? What is happening is a consolidation of privacy policies across most of the services Google offers. Other companies and services do this already rather than maintain separate documents, agreements, and records across several related sites. This way there is a single privacy policy that applies across Google products. That is a good thing: it’s simpler for users to understand, they don’t have to sign multiple documents, they know that certain things are and aren’t private across multiple services, and now something like removing demographic data from yourself applies universally, not just on one service. Why shouldn’t it be that way?” – http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/24/you-call-that-evil/

What are your concerns with this combination of data?