Google

What is all the fuss over the new Google privacy policy? What has changed about it? Does it affect me personally? What are others saying? Well all of these are very important questions to address when looking at a change in any company's procedures. The important thing is to not follow all the hype, whichever direction it may take, and form your own conclusions about it.

What is all the fuss about? Well the main reason people are getting aggravated is that Google has condensed it's services and instead of having separate policies and information sharing procedures, they have decided to look at users as one entity across the board of its services. Now people are concerned that Google has gone too far and are worried about having their information put on the web and having it shared with too many parties. I can understand this sentiment and have looked into their claims. One technology website calls it "The end of "Don't Be Evil"." They claim that the new policy will collect all the information you upload, search for, and email in order to share that information. The truth in this claim is that, yes Google will collect all this information, but it will not be sharing it with anyone except the other services you use.

Others have taken a different look at it and have claimed that the technology world has overreacted. They claim that it has drastically simplified over 60 different privacy policies Google used to have and made it a much better system. They point out an instance in which congress sent a letter to Google CEO Larry Page expressing concerns on how people can opt out of sharing their information from individual websites or globally. It is true that you can no longer opt out of sharing information from individual services but you can opt out of sharing it globally. I love the answer that one individual provided, "Stop sharing things you don't want tracked." I find this to be common sense but a lot of people just don't grasp the concept.

Does it affect me personally? Of course it does. That is, if you use Google for anything at all it affects you. In Google's new policy, they have implemented a system that they claim will help you have a much better overall experience. Through this new system, Google will put cookies on your machine that allows them to recognize your preferences and track your searches in order to bring up relevant information Google thinks you will find interesting or useful. This may sound like an invasion of privacy but Google offers you the option to prevent all cookies from being placed on your machine. The only problem is that when you block all the cookies, it may alter your Google experience because the cookie function also allows them to remember pertinent information such as what language you prefer to view web pages in.

I feel that this new policy is not that big of a deal ant people are making too much of a fuss about it. When Google says that they will collect the information, they make it plain that it will not be shared with any other services unless explicitly allowed by the user. See the "information sharing" portion of the policy. I am not really bothered by the policy. There is more threat of someone stealing your identity than there is of someone getting hold of your personal information from Google. The only thing you are threatened with is that you may suffer a mild embarrassment if someone sees a compromising photo of you on the internet. In an instance such as this I concur with the previous individual and say don't put things on the internet that you don't want others to see. It's common sense. I am personally a Google+ user and use many of the Google services including this very blog site. The new system that Google offers is helpful because it allows you to have a personalized internet. The internet will be constantly evolving and changing and I personally don't want to be left in the data dust and struggling to catch up.

So if you have a problem with Google or their policies you do have a choice. DON'T USE GOOGLE. There are plenty of other search engines and social networking sites available. Google may be a powerhouse but they don't own the internet. If you are troubled by their policies or their practices you can just elect not to use their services and all will be fine. You are not forced to use Google.

This video shows you what the talking heads are saying. They take a very biased standpoint and do nothing but bash Google while at the same time ridiculing other sites to make you feel like you don't have a choice. This is a classic example of how media warps the facts.

This video shows how useful the new policy will be. We've watched tons of science fiction films where a user is able to have a ridiculously personal experience with the internet and think "wow that's so cool" yet when Google is attempting to do that very thing, everyone cries foul and hops on the bandwagon to bash Google. Change is inevitable people and the sooner we understand that, the better our lives will be.