Google Seeks to Reassure House Panel on Privacy Changes
Tuesday, January 31st, 2012Google responded Tuesday to a number of concerns raised by members of Congress about the company’s plan to fold more than 60 product-specific privacy policies into one, beginning March 1.
The change, said Pablo Chavez, director of public policy at Google, is about treating each user as a single entity across all of the company’s Web properties — from Gmail, Google Maps, Google Apps and Blogger to Chrome, Android, YouTube and Google+.
The aim is to enable the company to deliver a simpler, more understandable and intuitive Google experience, Chavez said.
“By folding more than 60 product-specific privacy policies into our main Google one, we’re explaining our privacy commitments to users of those products in 85 percent fewer words,” Chavez said in a blog post Tuesday. This is “something that lawmakers and regulators have asked technology companies to do.”
Congressional Questions
The search engine giant has been publicizing the policy change on its Search homepage as well as through e-mails and notifications to users of its numerous online services.
Eight members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, including Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Edward Markey, D-Mass., had questioned whether consumers would be able to opt out of Google’s data-sharing system, either globally or on a product-by-product basis.
“We believe that consumers should have the ability to opt-out of data collection when they are not comfortable with a company’s terms of service, and that the ability to exercise that choice should be simple and straightforward,” they wrote in a letter Thursday to Google CEO Larry Page.
Limited to Google Account Holders
In his letter responding to the House committee, Chavez said the numerous privacy policies currently in effect restrict Google’s ability to combine information within any single account for two or more different services. By moving to a single privacy policy, Google will be able…
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