Privacy and Google are two words that often incite a debate as to how Google uses our personal data. In an attempt to quell the concerns of those worried about their privacy, Google has announced that it will simplify its privacy policy to make it more transparent and easier to understand. Though the search giant was quick to clarify that it's not actually making changes to the policy itself, the company also said it would delete a number of product-specific policies.
"Most of our products and services are covered by our main Google Privacy Policy," writes Mike Yang, Associate General Counsel at Google. "Some, however, also have their own supplementary individual policies," he continues. "Since there is a lot of repetition, we are deleting 12 of these product-specific policies. These changes are also in line with the way information is used between certain products—for example, since contacts are shared between services like Gmail, Talk, Calendar and Docs, it makes sense for those services to be governed by one privacy policy as well."
Yang goes on to say that the main Google Privacy Policy will also see some changes. This includes the deletion or rewriting of bits that are either redundant or too legalistic.
"For example, we’re deleting a sentence that reads, 'The affiliated sites through which our services are offered may have different privacy practices and we encourage you to read their privacy policies,' since it seems obvious that sites not owned by Google might have their own privacy policies."
Google is also adding content to its product Help Centers so people will be able to find information about protecting their privacy more easily, and adding a new privacy tools page to the Google Privacy center.
