Google Faces Backlash for Privacy Policy Change-Up

Do you read the privacy policy of everything you sign, become a member of, rely on, or visit on the Internet? If you answered no, you're not alone. It's become all too common to scroll to the bottom of an agreement waiver and just click the appropriate box that will get you to where you want to go quickly – all without the hours spent squinting at illegibly small text. Envisioning how often you use Google.com, whether it is for search engine purposes or to connect with friends through Google Plus, have you ever considered what personal and professional information you are inadvertently sharing through the site? Like most of us, you probably haven't. The answers to these questions make for a riotous reaction to the uproar of Internet-savvy people who are causing a ruckus over Google Inc.

changing up their privacy policy. The company is doing so in order to cover all of its entities, rather than having over 70 separate privacy policies for each individual product. Had Google not publicly announced the switch that will be taking place over the next month, it would be interesting to find out how many of these outraged web surfers would have ever noticed. On Google's official blog, it is explained that the new privacy policy is being created in an effort to offer a sleeker and less complicated user experience. Bad, Google, bad! Here's what they had to say, “So we're rolling out a new main privacy policy that covers the majority of our products and explains what information we collect, and how we use it, in a much more readable way. While we've had to keep a handful of separate privacy notices for legal and other reasons, we're consolidating more than 60 into our main Privacy Policy.” The biggest change users will undergo once the policy is in effect is if a user is signed into two Google Accounts, Google may combine information from several different services in order to create a more intuitive, leading experience. Ads will become more applicable, along with spelling suggestions relevant to a user's life. In short, Google is affording its users a single, condensed privacy policy rather than 70 or more different documents that will ease an internet user's experience as a whole. If someone doesn't dig this new policy, they have the option to close their Google account completely. With all the different avenues one can take, there are still those who don't agree with the changes. Gizmodo's Mat Honan wrote a blog piece stating that Google broke its promise to not be evil. “Google built its reputation, and its multibillion-dollar business, on the promise of its ‘don't be evil' philosophy,” Honan wrote. “And now it's pulling the stakes out, collapsing it. It gives you a few weeks to pull your data out, using its data-liberation service, but if you want to use Google services, you have to agree to these rules.” Whatever side those in the internet community are on, one thing is clear; change is coming and it cannot be stopped. Google's new privacy policy will be in effect come March 1, 2012. Google Inc. closed at $569.49 on Wednesday, down 1.97% for the day.