Google's privacy policy changes happening in October

http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy_changes_2010.html

by abraham • 16 years ago

60 28 16 years ago

google.com

enomar• 16 years ago

Gotta love that they provided a diff instead of just updating it and saying it's been updated.

blahedo2• 16 years ago

As opposed to Apple: http://www.blahedo.org/blog/archives/001060.html

photon_off• 16 years ago

I really liked the blog post... but I'm not so sure I'd have liked it without readability. I generally hate giving out design advice, because it's not my forte and if it works well then I'm OK with it, but you've got to lose the Comic Sans, and white-on-green is a killer when you leave the page.

sabat• 16 years ago

I like the fact that they do the diff format. This sentence is now crossed out, and I find that a little frightening:

At Google we recognize that privacy is important.

davidcuddeback2• 16 years ago

When I saw that, I immediately thought it was a joke on someone else's website. Then I looked at the domain, and I too was frightened.

Edit: Other than that, I don't see anything alarming in the diffs.

houseabsolute5• 16 years ago

I suspect that it's not that Google's feelings on privacy have changed, it's just that they've opted for brevity over flowery language. Saying "we care about privacy" as an internet company is basically content-free, because everyone does it.

blahedo2• 16 years ago

That was precisely my first reaction too. On the other hand, there are a lot of places where the stuff you might call the "whereas" clauses---i.e. why we do this---is also excised; the result is a bit leaner and probably easier to read.

So, maybe not too scary. But yeah, that diff was alarming.

yanw• 16 years ago

Putting it into context: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/trimming-our-privacy-...

The policy is still the same, the wording is less "lawyerly".

lethargus• 16 years ago

Many policies become "lawyerly" to avoid ambiguities and loopholes. What happens when you make it less "lawyerly"?

danilocampos• 16 years ago

Half expected to see it replaced with:

"At Google we recognize that revenue is important."

edit: Aw, come on!

Nah, downvote me, you're right.

Andrew_Quentin5• 16 years ago

It seems that the only perhaps significant difference is apparently the crossing out of the words which state in so many words that google will use the date only for the purposes allowed under this privacy policy and no other purpose.

Edit: Indeed after reading the plain version the words seem, and apparently above are not really necessary. The change might not be entirely significant, but it might in many ways be compared to the principle that the government can do only what is authorised to under the law while citizens can do anything that is not prohibited by the law.

Whether it is significant that google has chosen to move from the former to the later I am not certain. They surely have the right to, they are not a government, but it is a significant change, rather than just trimming.

Thus, unlike previously, they do not need to adhere to their privacy policy. They might therefore be free to, well I do not know, we will find out soon.

adulau• 16 years ago

If you want to see a complete evolution of the privacy policies, you can use http://www.goodiff.org/ . For example, the privacy faq of Google:

http://www.goodiff.org/changeset/587/google/www.google.com/p...

rwl2• 16 years ago

That is an awesome service. But why are they tracking so few privacy policies? Where, for example, is Facebook?

s3graham• 16 years ago

"Goo" diff, not "good" diff.

andrewgioia• 16 years ago

I never realized that Google Dashboard existed until reading this (https://www.google.com/dashboard/). It's nice to be able to access all of the services/settings in one page, and a little frightening to see how much I really use Google and how much information I have stored there...

indiejade• 16 years ago

October 3rd? This is either a typo or perhaps this new privacy policy thing is not in effect until a month from today? "Last modification" date is a little misleading if the latter is true; the policy could have some sort of language regarding "effective as of DD_MM_YYYY" to be more clear.

Google's privacy policy changes happening in October

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