Users of Google services (pretty much all of us in one way or another) should be aware that the internet giant’s privacy policies are soon to be changed, these changes are due tomorrow, Thursday 1st March 2012.
However you use Google, whether it be purely Search, or you have a Gmail account, you use Google+ or even Google Docs; Google is storing information about you that it is now using increasingly more readily to provide targeted advertising on your screens.
In the Ascensor blog post earlier this month, ‘Does your Google search look the same’ we intimated that Google was changing the results just for you; well if changes to the privacy policy tomorrow do go ahead, then everything you use on Google will begin to get a lot more ‘just for you’.
The changes that have been announced have been designed to bring all of the small parts of information that Google know about us together into a single portrait that can be accessed by advertisers to promote even greater targeting of advertising, whatever Google service we are using at any one time. Google will likely have more on us than anyone, than any government, this really will be the closest we have come in the UK to Big Brother.
So is there any chance that the changes won’t happen? I think it ranges from 'unlikely' to 'not on your nelly' – who will stop them? Apparently US Attorney General expressed strong concerns about the policy and the EU have declared that it will investigate a potential violation of data protection, neither of which have stopped Google from a business decision that will likely change our online experience is forever.
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