So much for “don’t be evil,” said Raakhee Mirchandani in BostonHerald.com. Google’s unofficial motto is now a cruel joke—that is, if you value your privacy. The company is rolling out an aggressive new privacy policy on March 1, allowing it to combine data on users from all its platforms for the first time. Google will “cross-pollinate” information from Google searches, emails on Gmail, YouTube videos, posts on Google+, and even applications on Android smartphones to create a “complete picture of who you are, what you read, where you’re going, and what you’re up to.” The company says the changes will simply allow Google to serve you better, such as by telling you that you’re running late for a meeting scheduled on Google Calendar, based on your location on Google Maps. But the new policy will also enable Google to create targeted advertising that’s based on all your personal data. “Scared yet?”
No one should be shocked, said Jennifer Valentino-DeVries in WSJ.com. People who use free email, search engines, and social networks have to realize “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Google gets 96 percent of its revenue from ads, and it will thrive only if it creates more-effective advertising, aimed directly at you. “In a sense, Google has no choice but to do this,” said Dan Lyons in TheDailyBeast.com. It’s competing with Facebook for ad dollars, and the social-networking giant has, in effect, built a “private Internet” with its 800 million members, collecting exclusive, detailed user data for targeted ads. Google’s combative co-founder Larry Page has decided to do the same, privacy advocates be damned. If you don’t like what we’re doing with your personal information, Google is effectively now saying, “stop using our product.”
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