If you haven’t heard, Google is changing its privacy policy as of March 1. The change is a big one and it is intended to combine Google’s 70 privacy policies into one. However, according to The Center for Digital Democracy, Google’s real reason for changing its privacy policy is to boost its advertising business, not make life easier for users. The CDD filed a 16 page complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and is seeking to enforce a consent order filed in 2011, fine, penalize and seek remedies.
CDD is joining the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in asking the FTC to enforce the consent order, and a chorus of voices, including the European Commission, in asking Google to delay implementation of its privacy policies until a thorough investigation can be completed.
Is Google collecting information on you that will help their business?
Of course they are. Are they going to stop? Not any time soon.
After all the investigations are complete, Google will come out with a privacy policy that may be more transparent, but in the end they will still be collecting information on their users.
When you boil Google’s business down to its essence, they make money by selling advertising. If they can get to know you through the information they collect, it enables them display ads that you will find relevant. The more relevant the ad, the more likely you are to click on it and put a few dollars in their bank account. This isn’t really much different from Bing and Facebook, or any other advertising platform that shows ads based on information collected from user input.
Whether the CDD and EPIC want to admit it, combining seventy policies into one certainly does make things easier for the end user. In addition this combination makes it possible for Google to provide users with a “privacy dashboard” where they can control how much information is collected on them. It’s a heck of a lot easier to understand and control than Facebook’s privacy controls which seem to change daily.
So what should you do?
The best thing you can do is to be an advocate for your privacy rights. If you are concerned about what data is being collected on you, and what is being done with it, spend time reading and understanding the privacy policies for the sites and businesses you interact with. Make educated decisions about which businesses offer enough of a payoff that you’re willing to let them collect data about you, and which businesses just aren’t worth it. And keep an eye out on the legislation regarding privacy so you can make sure your vote counts when our lawmakers are deciding what limitations are important.
And if you’re really worried about it, you can always stop using Google. Oh, and you might want to stop using Bing, Facebook, Yahoo, Pandora and all those cool phone apps. But for me, that is just too much of a trade off. For now, I’m willing to give a little data about me so that I can spend some quality time launching birds across my phone screen.
About the author: Jeune Ortiz is VP of Marketing and Creative Director at future-ink. With more than 20 years of experience in graphic design and marketing, Jeune brings extensive knowledge and creativity to each website and internet marketing solution to grow your business.
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1 Comment
RJ O | March 22, 2012
Nice Article. I’ve been wondering about that for awhile now. I hope they really are making a privacy dashboard. It’s one of the main reasons why I’ve been trying to avoid google+. I thought facebook was bad, but now I just feel like Google knows the diameter of my pupils.