Are you concerned about Google’s new Privacy Policy?

Google assures to shove the boundaries of what people expect from it to get better results or may be it would give worse. Well just after some days of launching the new personalized search that fetched criticism from competitors as well from the users, the company has announced that the company is going to revise its privacy policies which are going to shift off to another wave of discontent about the allusion for users. Now the question is, will these new compilation policies be another sign of its failure to the company’s promise and becoming worse day by day?  Or will the excitement over the new version allow the search giant to share data among its assorted services, just a twister in the privacy teapot?

Google in one of its blog post announced that its new privacy policy will be out soon in March however this new version is already available online. The company proclaimed that it has more than 70 privacy policies right now that rules over its wide services from YouTube to Gmail to Blogger. Privacy director Alma Whitten says this loom was:

[A]t odds with our efforts to integrate our different products more closely so that we can create a beautifully simple, intuitive user experience.

Google is in an effort to make things easier for its users:

In the post, Google also added that the driving force behind its fusion will provide an ability to mingle the data that you have provided to one of its services from other services which is designed merely to offer “a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.” Moreover the official announcement knots it directly to the launch of personalized search which is according to the blog post is an example of “the cool things Google can do when we combine information across products.”

The hurricane of criticism over the new personalized search that appears to break Google’s promise to its user that it would offer “objective” search results, seems to have many suspicious of any change that Google makes, and also some of the argues that this caused people to over-react to the new privacy policy.

But the policy issue appears to have highlighted for many a decisive question: Is Google having all of that info about you? Including web searches, Google Analytics data from your website, even location information that I believe is a good thing, isn’t it? Some privacy activists say the new policy is “frustrating and a little frightening.”

Does Google desire to serve users better or serve advertisers better?

In The Economist notes in title of the privacy changes it has been added that one of the driving forces behind sharing info between Google services is that it will offer an opportunity of search giant to more identify and target users for advertising, or we can say the identical goal Facebook has in offering many of its new attributes, such as its “frictionless sharing” apps and even the new Timeline personal history feature.

This may be also at core of nervousness about both of the services hoarding more and more personal data: it may craft things easier, but the question is for whom? Does it just make it easier for Google and Facebook to attract advertisers, or is it actually beneficial for users as well?

Google makes a note that you can export your data from the majority of its services, thanks to an effort it calls the Data Liberation Front, so users who don’t like their information being shared can take their business elsewhere. But there is no “opt out” that allows users to not take part in this data sharing, and that could be an issue for Google as controllers like the European Union put more and more focus on what some have called the “right to be forgotten” and the need to give users more control over what happens to their personal information.

The key point is that whether you consider Google’s privacy policy as evil or not depends simply upon that what you think about company’s intention is: Does it wants to help users find info that is related to them? If yes then gathering data is pretty good.  But if Google’s probable bend of that purpose with its personalized search and favoritism towards Google+ results has you doubtful about its motives, then it may look a bit evil.