SeoblogR

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!

Recently Google has released their Privacy policy link on their home page. What, wait…they RECENTLY published a link to the Privacy policy on their home page? Yes, you heard me. Google didn’t have a link to their Privacy policy until not so long time ago.

Why?

Well, they claim they didn’t wanted to destroy their “beautiful clean home page”.

Google have been repeatedly questioned about the lack of Privacy policy link on their home page and until recently they managed to stay with their home page clean. I guess “Privacy” link on bottom of the page makes their website completely unreadable and “dirty”. I think it looks so bad now, that we all should abandon Google and start using other search engines.

Thats what it’s all about. The “Privacy” link next to ©2008 sign. You can read Google Privacy policy to see what kind of informations does Google collect. Most people never read Privacy policies on any website and to be honest i think most people interested in reading it didn’t know where to find it on Google.

Google was pressured from many angles to put this link on their website. First of all because it’s a good thing to do, to show the visitors what personal informations are gathered by Google. I can’t imagine huge websites not having a privacy policy. Nowadays it’s a must.

Second of all, Google is trying to join the Network Advertising Initiative, a trade group that works to provide standards for data collection and data usage for use in Internet advertising industry. Since one of NAI members principals is to provide clean and understandable notice on how they are collecting and storing data Google had problems as they didn’t displayed their Privacy policy in a clean and easy to understand manner.

At first Google told that they will not comply with that rule, but i guess they changed their minds.

Third of all, Google was violating The California Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003 which requires that…

An operator of a commercial Web site or online service
that collects personally identifiable information through the
Internet about individual consumers residing in California who use
or visit its commercial Web site or online service shall
conspicuously post its privacy policy on its Web site as
a text link that hyperlinks to a Web page on which the actual
privacy policy is posted, if the text link is located on the homepage
or first significant page after entering the Web site.

As Google is based in California i guess they should comply with the local law and put a link to their Privacy policy on their home page. But once again Google showed how big they are. So big that they can bend/break the law.

All in all Google has published a Privacy policy link on their website replacing “Google” with “Prvacy” next to ©2008 sign on bottom of www.google.com home page.

But don’t be mislead, that doesn’t apply to all Google language versions. For instance Vietnamese (in Vietnamese language) and Swiss (in Rumantsch language) versions still holds Google on the bottom.

Heh, it’s all so complicated. And Google was supposed to be so clean and easy.

Can someone tell me why Google makes it so complicated to everyone and why did they refused to place a Privacy link on their home page? Any reasonable answers? Maybe you have some inside connections to answer that question. Well, anyway, i’m waiting for enlightenment.