In honour of International Privacy Day on the 28th of January, Google publicly published its official privacy principles.
Although the company has come under fire from privacy advocates and political opponents over the technology behind their targeted PPC advertising and the level of user data harvested via search and other services, the company has always defended itself as having a responsible attitude to the debate. It argues that whatever data it collects is both anonymous and used to improve its services and technology, making its search engine marketing and online advertising more relevant to users and more attractive to advertisers.
The five principles are:
1. Use information to provide our users with valuable products and services. Search history is used to inform the new personalised search feature. There has been some controversy over Google’s decision to make this an opt-out feature rather than opt-in. Search history also allows closer targeting of PPC advertising to users on hosted display ads on the Google content network.
2. Develop Products that reflect strong privacy standards and practices: Despite the criticisms often levelled at the company, practically all Google applications allow users to opt-out of personal data collection and storage.
3. Make the collection of personal information transparent: The Google Dashboard was launched in 2009 and aims to provide a central page for all of the information Google has collected on a Google user ID.
4. Give users meaningful choices to protect their privacy: Privacy issues related to street view are the most public example of this – Google often blurs the faces of those captured in its street photography and will remove images entirely if complaints are made.
5. Be a responsible steward of the information we hold: The data collected by Google is strictly for internal uses and is not for sale to other companies.
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