Finally the European regulators have decided to act.
The European Commission has asked the company to
provide greater clarity on its new privacy policy and make it easier for users
to opt out of it since there are concerns over privacy and how the data
gathered by the company may be used.
The Internet search giant had changed its privacy
policy last year and made it uniform across all its services and also regulates
how it controls the data which is collected.
"The policy allows Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) to
combine data collected from one person using its disparate services, from Gmail
to YouTube."
However Google doesn’t differentiate between the data
collected so it treats data from search results and credit card numbers the
same and can be used for any purpose that it deems fit.
France's data protection agency had spear-headed a
European investigation into the company's new unified privacy policy and find
out what kind of privacy concerns are being violated.
The investigation noted that "the collection of
data is not just limited to people with accounts to Google applications. The
web giant can collect information from anyone who visits a website that has a
link to its services - for example, a Google map posting."
The commission pointed out that of the top 500
most-visited sites in France, 90 percent had a link with Google.
With that kind of power, comes responsibility, the
commission said.
Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, president of the French
National Commission on Computing and Freedom, said that Google would have three
to four months to respond but that there wasn't a firm deadline.
"We haven't asked Google to go back to its old
policy," she told reporters. "We've asked it to complete and clarify
it on a certain number of points."
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