Google Stays Classy in "Privacy" Backpedal

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July 3, 2008

Google Stays Classy in "Privacy" Backpedal

There’s a post up on Google’s official blog regarding a small cosmetic change to the search engine’s front page.

In late May there was a scuffle between Google and a trade group over whether or not California law compels Google to include a link to its privacy policy on its front page. Google was resistant to the idea because adding the word “privacy” would represent an intolerable level of clutter, and there the matter rested until today.

Google VP Marissa Mayer explained the change in a blog post this afternoon:

“Trust is the basis of everything we do, so we want you to be familiar and comfortable with the integrity and care we give your personal data. We added this link both to our homepage and to our results page to make it easier for you to find information about our privacy principles. The new ‘Privacy’ link goes to our Privacy Center, which was revamped earlier this year to be more straightforward and approachable, with videos and a non-legalese overview to make sure you understand in basic terms what Google does, does not, will, and won’t, do in regard to your personal information.

“How does privacy relate to homepage word count? Larry and Sergey told me we could only add this to the homepage if we took a word away - keeping the ‘weight’ of the homepage unchanged at 28 [total words]. Given that the new Privacy link fit best with legal disclaimers on the page, I looked to the copyright line. There, we dropped the word ‘Google’ (realizing it was implied, obviously) and added the new privacy link alongside it.”

Mayer did not, as near as I can tell, also post a YouTube video featuring her sneering into the camera and muttering “Whatever, losers.”

YouTube is, of course, a touchy subject right now, so it was probably best to leave physical displays of Google’s disdain to our imaginations.

(Link)