From Mar 1, Google will consolidate 60 privacy policies into one

In a very significant move which has the potential to impinge upon privacy rights, from March 1, 60 Google products will be consolidated into one single database. Sanjib Kr Baruah reports.

In a very significant move which has the potential to impinge upon privacy rights, from March 1, 60 Google products will be consolidated into one single database.

'We're getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that's a lot shorter and easier to read. Our new policy covers multiple products and features, reflecting our desire to create one beautifully simple and intuitive experience across Google,' the company said in a post.

While the company has said that its basic philosophy of protecting privacy hasnt changed, the aim of the move is to provide with as much transparency and choice as possible, through products like Google Dashboard and Ads Preferences Manager alongside other tools.

This is bound to raise heckels of privacy propenents. Said Shelly Palmer in a huffingtonpost.com post: 'The aggregation of these data will empower Google to correlate and contextualize our thoughts, aspirations, actions, physical locations and the timelines for the basic processes of the doing of life.'

Google also said: 'And we'll never sell your personal information or share it without your permission (other than rare circumstances like valid legal requests),' it said.

And legal requests from India are already climbing.

Interestingly in the January to June 2011 period, Google received a request from an Indian local law enforcement agency to remove 236 communities and profiles from orkut that were critical of a politician. 'We did not comply with this request, since the content did not violate our Community Standards or local law.'

Again, from July to December 2010, there were requests from different Indian law enforcement agencies to remove a blog and YouTube videos that were critical of chief ministers and senior officials of different states.

The number of such content removal requests had already increased by 123% compared to the previous reporting period.