Congress having a hard time understanding Google privacy policies
Google recently announced they were getting rid of all their separate privacy policies by March 1st. They will be replaced by a single all-encompassing privacy policy that covers all of the Google products and services, and Google has a more than 70 of them.
Representative Mary Bono Mack from the Silicon Valley State of California is possibly showing signs of the lack of technological savvy. She couldn’t understand the new privacy and she called for an investigation into Google’s policy.
In response to the Congresswoman’s letter, Google sent a 13-page response. I think they should have kept it to a couple of sentences on a single double-spaced page.
Maybe it was the length, but the 13-page letter that basically says Google has not changed their privacy policy just could mot by understood. They are just combining the 70-plus policies into one.
Representative Mary Bono Mack invited the Google people to a BBQ. Well, it was Google that was getting grilled in front of a hearing of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade subcommittee, which Mary chairs.
Google’s Director of Public Policy, Pablo Chavez, accompanied by Michael Yang, Senior Counsel and mouthpiece for Google, made the appearance and both were questioned for two hours straight.
They tried to walk the committee through all the steps that a user could take to control each of their privacy settings all in one place. This will be a lot easier to do once the new policy settings are in place.
You can see a preview of Google’s new privacy policy. You will be surprised that it looks a lot shorter than Google’s letter to the subcommittee.
Representative Mary Bono Mack was not happy with Google’s response. She said “By being more simple, is actually more complicated.” I guess 5,000-page pieces of legislation are more simple because they are longer.
What do you think about Google’s new privacy policy?
