I’ve criticized the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service before but now the privacy policy is being updated and Google is doing the right thing and notifying users of its different services. With a month as advance notice, the policy goes into effect October 3rd, 2010. Google states the changes are to make the policies “more transparent and understandable”. A significant part of the change is that a dozen of Google’s products will no longer have their own specific privacy policies but will instead be governed by the general Google Privacy Policy.
Google explains that it has 5 principles that it adheres to across its products.
- Use information to provide our users with valuable products and services.
- Develop products that reflect strong privacy standards and practices.
- Make the collection of personal information transparent.
- Give users meaningful choices to protect their privacy.
- Be a responsible steward of the information we hold.
The twelve products that are losing their individual privacy policies include:
- 3D Warehouse
- App Engine
- Calendar
- Docs
- Firefox Extensions
- G1
- Gmail
- Feedback
- iGoogle
- Maps
- Talk
- Tasks
You can find out more about the upcoming update to the Google Privacy Policy and preview the updated policy. If you disagree with the pending changes and wish to discontinue using a certain Google product, you might visit the Google Data Liberation Front site for information about getting your data into or out of a Google service.