Google set to simplify privacy policy

SAN FRANCISCO, USA: Internet search giant Google Inc said on Friday that it is updating its privacy policy to make them more user-friendly and to better reflect how its products work together.

“We're simplifying and updating Google's privacy policies. To be clear, we aren't changing any of our privacy practices; we want to make our policies more transparent and understandable,” Google associate general counsel Mike Yang said in a blog post.

Google said that it has 5 privacy principles that describe how it approaches privacy and user information across all of its products. They are:

• Use information to provide our users with valuable products and service.

• Develop products that reflect strong privacy standards and practices.

• Make the collection of personal information transparent.

• Give users meaningful choices to protect their privacy.

• Be a responsible steward of the information we hold.

Google will make two significant changes to the privacy policy. First, it would remove the repetitive product specific privacy policy, and the second one would be the new privacy tools page.

It will also combine the individual privacy policies of similar products. For example, Gtalk, Gmail, Google Docs and Google calendar carries similar privacy policies. Google will now combine all those privacy policies to one.

These privacy policy updates will take effect on October 3, 2010.