Take My Cookies, Give Me My Google Search

Google has announced that effec­tive 1 March 2012 it will con­sol­i­date all 60 of its pri­vacy poli­cies into one and will share infor­ma­tion across all of its ser­vices. This has many of the pri­vacy para­noid in a tizzy. Among the more amus­ing con­cerns expressed are:

• “I don’t want my bak­ery shop owner to know what kind of med­i­cines I buy from the nearby med­ical store”
• “Pri­vate email mes­sages might con­tain any num­ber of per­sonal, embar­rass­ing, or oth­er­wise dam­ag­ing infor­ma­tion, and Google’s attempts to amplify and con­tex­tu­al­ize this infor­ma­tion through tar­geted ads, Maps sug­ges­tions, or Cal­en­dar reminders could have neg­a­tive con­se­quences for users.” — Sen. Richard Blu­men­thal (D-Conn.)
• “Google will know more about you than your wife does”

You get the point, the typ­i­cal reac­tions. The truth is, the infor­ma­tion that is shared from the dif­fer­ent Google sources is just as pro­tected as it always has been. What is changed is that all of the Google ser­vices now share infor­ma­tion among each other.

If your e-mails include such pri­vate infor­ma­tion that you are seri­ously wor­ried about inter­cep­tion, you should be using some form of encryp­tion. If you are wor­ried about what is divulged on your social media page then you are just plain delu­sional, it is divulged and you should not be post­ing dummy. If you truly believe that your brows­ing his­tory is com­pletely pri­vate now you are most likely mis­taken. If you are that con­cerned about pri­vacy you should prob­a­bly stay off of the Internet.

I for one wel­come Google con­tin­u­ing to improve its busi­ness model. I greatly enjoy hav­ing such a great search engine avail­able for free. Any­thing that can be done to improve my abil­ity to find even more infor­ma­tion so quickly is fine with me. When I think back to the time when it took days, even weeks, in the uni­ver­sity library to find just one piece of infor­ma­tion that I can now find in min­utes I am con­tin­u­ally amazed.

Is Still Here

BTW, the impor­tant part of Google’s new pri­vacy state­ment is what infor­ma­tion they share. It reads as fol­lows:

Infor­ma­tion we share

We do not share per­sonal infor­ma­tion with com­pa­nies, orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als out­side of Google unless one of the fol­low­ing cir­cum­stances apply:

• With your consent

We will share per­sonal infor­ma­tion with com­pa­nies, orga­ni­za­tions or indi­vid­u­als out­side of Google when we have your con­sent to do so. We require opt-in con­sent for the shar­ing of any sen­si­tive per­sonal information.

• With domain administrators

If your Google Account is man­aged for you by a domain admin­is­tra­tor (for exam­ple, for Google Apps users) then your domain admin­is­tra­tor and resellers who pro­vide user sup­port to your orga­ni­za­tion will have access to your Google Account infor­ma­tion (includ­ing your email and other data). Your domain admin­is­tra­tor may be able to:

• view sta­tis­tics regard­ing your account, like sta­tis­tics regard­ing appli­ca­tions you install.
• change your account password.
• sus­pend or ter­mi­nate your account access.
• access or retain infor­ma­tion stored as part of your account.
• receive your account infor­ma­tion in order to sat­isfy applic­a­ble law, reg­u­la­tion, legal process or enforce­able gov­ern­men­tal request.
• restrict your abil­ity to delete or edit infor­ma­tion or pri­vacy settings.

Please refer to your domain administrator’s pri­vacy pol­icy for more information.

• For exter­nal processing

We pro­vide per­sonal infor­ma­tion to our affil­i­ates or other trusted busi­nesses or per­sons to process it for us, based on our instruc­tions and in com­pli­ance with our Pri­vacy Pol­icy and any other appro­pri­ate con­fi­den­tial­ity and secu­rity measures.

• For legal reasons

We will share per­sonal infor­ma­tion with com­pa­nies, orga­ni­za­tions or indi­vid­u­als out­side of Google if we have a good-faith belief that access, use, preser­va­tion or dis­clo­sure of the infor­ma­tion is rea­son­ably nec­es­sary to:

• meet any applic­a­ble law, reg­u­la­tion, legal process or enforce­able gov­ern­men­tal request.
• enforce applic­a­ble Terms of Ser­vice, includ­ing inves­ti­ga­tion of poten­tial violations.
• detect, pre­vent, or oth­er­wise address fraud, secu­rity or tech­ni­cal issues.
• pro­tect against harm to the rights, prop­erty or safety of Google, our users or the pub­lic as required or per­mit­ted by law.

We may share aggre­gated, non-personally iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion pub­licly and with our part­ners – like pub­lish­ers, adver­tis­ers or con­nected sites. For exam­ple, we may share infor­ma­tion pub­licly to show trends about the gen­eral use of our services.

If Google is involved in a merger, acqui­si­tion or asset sale, we will con­tinue to ensure the con­fi­den­tial­ity of any per­sonal infor­ma­tion and give affected users notice before per­sonal infor­ma­tion is trans­ferred or becomes sub­ject to a dif­fer­ent pri­vacy policy.