As of March 1st, Google will actively implement its new privacy policy which will apply for the array of multiple services the company features. There are about 60 different policies that will be combined into one, from email, video and social networking to search engine. And this is what changes.
After facing for a lot of time criticism regarding sharing users’ data, Google has decided to make the leap and change things a little bit. U.S. regulators and overall scrutiny regarding the policy on sharing users’ content has intensified after Google’s first social networking attempt, Buzz, had to be shut down.
According to the company, the new privacy policy should provide users with much more relevant search results and improve the relationship between advertisers and customers. The changes will affect everything from Google Search, to Gmail, YouTube and Google+. And Obviously the majority of changes pertain to people who have Google accounts.
Alma Whitten, Google’s director of privacy, product and engineering, said: “We’re rolling out a new main privacy policy that covers the majority of our products and explains what information we collect, and how we use it in a more readable way”.
Basically, as Alma Whitten explained, with the new changes, Google will “treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience”. So, starting with March, Google will integrate any kind of information you have already put in. That applies to calendar appointments, search preferences, contacts, search queries and so on.
Google will be able to create automatic calendar entries for future events and send you alerts about traffic conditions based on your location. Based on the interests you have expressed in Google+, Gmail and YouTube, Google will virtually “tailor your search results” and “suggest search queries”, if you are signed into Google.
Washington Post writes that under the company’s new policy, users can’t opt out of. So, basically, Google will soon get to know you better than your actual friends. At least in terms of preferences and interests.
If Google’s new policy isn’t right up your alley, than all that’s left for you to do is close your account. And if you don’t want to lose all your data, Google says it is committed to “data liberation”.
