Lately, I've been using Google a lot more in managing my business. My main e-mail is a gmail account, I communicate with my team using google docs, a check my website stats with Google Analytics and I post videos using You Tube.
Recently, Google send me an e-mail that their privacy settings are changing. Here is an outline of the changes from Google. Essentially, Google is streamlining their 70 different privacy policies (one for gmail, one for google docs, one for You Tube) and morphing them into one policy for all of Google. They are also making your information available across platforms so that you can access “all things Google” with just one login. On top of that, they made it easier to get your data from Google and transfer it to another service.
Here is my take on the new Google privacy policy.
The good: The privacy policy is now much more clear. And, now there is only one document to read rather then 70+. Additionally, it is somewhat convenient to move seamlessly between Google products. Also, google ads (and search results) will be even more tailored because google can base them off of data from all the services you use.
The bad: The “key to the kingdom” approach of having everything accessible under one umbrella makes it difficult to have different “personas” on different platforms. I get that google wants to make it easy — but this makes having You Tube channels for different niches a bit for difficult. It also makes it harder to delegate access to just “certain” parts of your business to your team.
The uncomfortable: Yeah, I know that Google has all of this data about me already. And, I mostly accept that as the cost of using their free products. (Side note: If you want to see what information google has about you – go to http://google.com/dashboard). However, putting all the data together and having it used throughout the system makes my slightly nervous (but not nervous enough to stop using Google).
What do you think of the new Google privacy policy?
