Google updated their privacy statement on Friday. Many have had privacy concerns for Google and other search engines for a while now. This is the latest effort by Google to get privacy concerns under control.
In a statement on the GoogleBlog on Friday, Nicole Wong, a lawyer for Google, explained the reasoning for the update:
We updated our privacy policy today. We know privacy is important to our users, and it’s important to us, too. That’s why we work hard to let people know how we collect and use personal information to provide our services. A clearly written privacy policy is part of this effort. In this update, most of the terms are the same, but there are two important differences:
First, we created a short, one-page “highlights” notice summarizing our privacy practices. We hope this is easy to digest and understand at a glance. Second, we provided even more detail about our privacy practices in the full-text privacy policy and lots more detail in the accompanying FAQs. The goal of both is to help you make informed choices about using our services.
The complete statement is in the “Google Privacy Center.” Google has had problems in recent months regarding privacy issues. There was a rift recently between Google and CNet over a story on privacy they wrote and used Google’s Eric Schmidt as the example.
The story printed some of his personal information and Google chose not to speak with them regarding any of their stories for several weeks. While Google’s own policies regarding privacy are detailed and thorough, privacy regarding content in their search engine and others is entirely another matter.
John Stith is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
