Use Google? YouTube? Have a Gmail account? Worried? Maybe You Should Be: Part 1

I admit, I constantly use all three in almost every aspect of my life.  But it looks like my Hotmail account, Yahoo Finance, and Vimeo are about to see a lot more of my traffic, and here’s why.  I received an email from Google just earlier today about their ‘new privacy policy’.  It seemed harmless enough, even like a step in the right direction of reducing these longwinded legal documents into something the average user can understand:

We’re getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that’s a lot shorter and easier to read. Our new policy covers multiple products and features, reflecting our desire to create one beautifully simple and intuitive experience across Google.

We believe this stuff matters, so please take a few minutes to read our updated Privacy Policy and Terms of Service at http://www.google.com/policies.

These changes will take effect on March 1, 2012.

Now I prefer a perspective developed from several, unaffiliated angles.. especially when it comes to my privacy.  So after a little digging I found some interesting feedback from some trustworthy sources:

Via: Washington Post:

Google said Tuesday it will follow the activities of users across e-mail, search, YouTube and other services, a shift in strategy that is expected to invite greater scrutiny of its privacy and competitive practices.

The information will enable Google to develop a fuller picture of how people use its growing empire of Web sites. Consumers will have no choice but to accept the changes.

The policy will take effect March 1 and will also impact Android mobile phone users, who are required to log in to Google accounts when they activate their phones.

Via: PCWorld

Google plans on tracking you across almost every one of its products you use including Calendar, Docs, Gmail, search, and YouTube to give you better search results, more precisely targeted ads, and helpful schedule reminders. The new “features” are set to kick in March 1 when Google is condensing more than 70 disparate privacy policies for all its different products into one mega-policy.

As a result of the change, whenever you sign into your Google account, the search giant will treat you as a single user and collect your user information into one database. The end result will be “a simpler, more intuitive Google experience,” according to Google’s blog post announcing the change.

Take it for what it’s worth, but it appears Google is hard on Facebook’s heels when it comes to data mining.  At least from my perspective, the scariest aspect of this new “privacy proposal” is two pronged: both the language and timing of this major change raises all sorts of alarms.  Google waited just a month before the new policy goes into effect to alert users, and their choice of wording is far cry from both PCWorld and the Post’s interpretation of the changes.