Google Inc plans to unify its privacy policy and terms of service across its online offerings, including its flagship search, Gmail and Google+ products, to make them easier to use, but the move could attract greater scrutiny from anti-trust regulators.<\/p>\n
In an online blog post, Google said it expects to roll out the revised guidelines in over a month’s time, consolidating more than 60 separate privacy policies it uses for its online products.<\/p>\n
Google currently has more than 70 privacy policies covering all of its products.<\/p>\n
Right now, users of Google products have to agree to a new set of privacy policy and terms of services almost every time they sign up for a new service.<\/p>\n
This leaves them with an option to opt out of certain services like Google+ or Picasa.<\/p>\n
After the new policy comes into effect, user information from most Google products will be treated as a single trove of data, which the company could use for its targeted advertising dollars, raising potential red flags for anti-trust regulators.<\/p>\n
“If you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services,” Google’s director of privacy, product and engineering, Alma Whitten wrote in blog post.<\/p>\n
“In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.”<\/p>\n
The announcement comes days after Google’s decision to personalize its search feature drew criticism over privacy and anti-trust issues.<\/p>\n
Online privacy has come under scrutiny from anti-trust regulators as a handful of web giants have been accused of compromising user privacy to attract advertisers.<\/p>\n
Late last year, Facebook settled with the U.S. FTC agreeing to be regulated for a period of 20 years whenever it decided to change its privacy policy.<\/p>\n
In 2010, the FTC settled charges with Twitter, after the agency alleged that the social networking service had failed to safeguard users’ personal information.<\/p>\n
U.S. regulators are reportedly looking into whether Google manipulates its search results to favor its own products and have expanded the probe to include Google+.<\/p>\n
“Regulators globally have been calling for shorter, simpler privacy policies – and having one policy covering many different products is now fairly standard across the Web,” Whitten said in the post.<\/p>\n
The revised policy will take effect on March 1, the blog post said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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