It’s here. Google’s new simplified privacy policy popped up today when I opened my Reader account, (if you don’t follow, here’s Part 1 and Part 2) and after 30 minutes or so I came to a single profound, concrete conclusion: it’s long.
Now I have to give Google credit, it’s the most user friendly privacy document I’ve seen to date; complete with unsophisticated illustrations that firmly reinforce it’s benign nature.
A caricature of how Google uses the information it gathers to improve the user experience.
Simplicity aside, what does this mean for the user? Well, as previously stated it’s a matter of perspective. Interestingly enough, the manner in which Google frames the changes immediately brought to mind a very specific phrase: “The Greater Good”. While a vast range of connotations are associated with these words, I feel they appropriately illustrate the multitude of grays that comprise the situation. In an effort to consolidate the experience, I provided excerpts of the policy below with some of the integral changes bolded. A link to the complete policy is also provided below.
From Google’s New Privacy Policy:
Your data on Google
Knowing a little bit about you can help make Google products better, both for you and for others. By understanding your preferences we can ensure that we give you the search results that you’re looking for, and by analyzing the search logs of millions of users in aggregate, we can continually improve our search algorithm, develop new features, keep our systems secure and even predict the next flu outbreak.
When it comes to the way that we look after your data on Google, our approach is based on transparency, control and security.
We have five privacy principles that describe how we approach privacy and user information across all of our products:
- Use information to provide our users with valuable products and services.
- 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.
Time limits on data retention
We anonymize IP addresses after 9 months and alter the cookie numbers in our logs permanently after 18 months. This breaks the link between the search query and the computer it was entered from and is similar to the way in which credit card receipts replace digits with hash marks to improve customer security.
Here is what an IP address could look like in our logs after 9 months: 123.45.67.XXX. After 18 months, the cookie will be replaced by a newly-generated cookie number.
Why we store search logs
We use search logs for many purposes, for example, to keep our services secure, develop new features that make search faster and more relevant, and even to predict outbreaks of disease.
Search
The ads that appear on Google Search are targeted based on your search queries. If you type “cheap flights”, for example, into Google, you will probably see sponsored links at the top of the page and on the right hand side showing ads from travel companies. To decide which ad to show you, the automated system looks at the search query that you enter, the relevance of the ads to this query and how much the advertiser is prepared to pay in the auction and, in some cases, your very recent query history, amongst other factors. These are examples of contextual ads as they are related to what you are looking for on that page at that time.
Interest-based advertising
In addition to the sponsored links you see on Search, Google places ads across the web by acting as an intermediary between advertisers and website owners. In some cases these are contextual like search ads, i.e. they are based on the content of the web page where they appear. In other cases they are interest-based ads and these are shown because we’ve made a guess at the types of things likely to interest you. We base this on other pages you’ve previously visited. So if you’ve visited many gardening sites, you may see more gardening ads across the web.
This is how it works:
- When you visit websites and watch videos where Google shows ads, we store a number in your browser by using a cookie to remember your visits. That number could be something like
114411. - Because many of the websites you visit are related to gardening, we’ll put your number (
114411) in the “gardening enthusiast” interest category. - So we may show you more ads that are relevant to gardening enthusiasts as you browse websites where Google provides ads.
Throughout this process we don’t store your name or keep any personal information about you. We just recognize the number stored in your browser, and show ads related to the interest categories associated with your cookie (so we’re recognizing your browser, not you). We don’t show ads based on sensitive information or interests, like race, religion, sexual orientation, health, or sensitive financial categories.
You can control which types of ads you see using Ads Preferences Manager. This allows you to change the interest categories associated with your browser (or if you don’t want us to store your interests at all, you can opt-out altogether).
Using Web History also means that you will get more personalized search results:
- Signed-in personalization:
- When you’re signed in to a Google Account with Web History, Google personalizes your search experience based on what you’ve searched for and which sites you’ve visited in the past.
- Signed-out personalization:
- When you’re not signed in, Google customizes your search experience based on past search information linked to your browser, using a cookie. Google stores up to 180 days of signed-out search activity linked to your browser’s cookie, including queries and results you click.
Disease
Imagine that somewhere in a remote place a man goes to Google and types in [fever]. Seconds later somebody nearby searches for [muscle ache]. And when more and more people from the same region start doing a similar search, it’s likely that something’s up.
Sometimes general patterns of search behavior match up closely to things happening in the offline world. When those correlations are strong, it can be possible to use spikes in a particular search to understand real-world behavior more quickly than traditional methods can notice a change. Using the aggregated searches of millions of people, we can help spot flu outbreaks or changes in economic conditions, giving professionals more time—and better information—to make decisions.
In 2008, we found that some search terms are good indicators of actual flu activity. It turns out that traditional flu surveillance systems take between one and two weeks to collect and release surveillance data. But Google search queries can be counted automatically very quickly. By making our flu estimates available each day, Google Flu Trends can provide an early-warning system for outbreaks of influenza. We have used the same insight to look at patterns of other diseases and have created an early warning system for dengue fever.
It’s important to remember that Google Flu Trends can never be used to identify individual users because we rely on anonymized, aggregated counts of how often certain search queries occur each week. We rely on millions of search queries over time, and the patterns we observe in the data are only meaningful across large populations of Google search users.
Ads Preferences Manager
Ads Preferences Manager allows you to view and edit the information that Google uses to show youinterest-based ads on websites in Google’s ad network.
Your interests are associated with an advertising cookie that’s stored in your browser. Using Ads Preferences Manager you can edit the categories associated with this cookie. For example, if you add “golf” to your interest categories you may now see more ads about golf. If you use a different browser or computer, your interest categories won’t carry over because they are specific to that cookie in that browser.
If you prefer, you can opt out altogether, and we will not store your interests. You will see the same number of ads as before, but they may not be as relevant.
If you want to persist your opt-out of interest-based ads from all NAI member companies, you can install the Keep My Opt-Outs extension for Chrome.
If you prefer not to receive interest-based advertising in mobile applications and other clients that use an anonymous ID, you can opt out using the appropriate preferences manager.
So, do you feel better or worse?
I have no real problems with it, as long as we get the possibility to (temporarily?) turn everything off. It should be a setting in your account. Not a third party software or a browser plugin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOE1HFEL8XA
While the possibility appears to exist (I can’t comment toward the effectiveness), the comments seem to apply only to google products like Chrome. I don’t think an opportunity to ‘opt out’ applies across the board. The jury is still out as to the actual vs. implied levels of privacy provided…