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Showing posts with label blogger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogger. Show all posts

Thursday, March 01, 2012

Google implements privacy policy despite EU warning

Google
Google
Internet company Google has gone ahead with its new privacy policy despite warnings from the EU that it might violate European law.

The change means private data collected by one Google service can be shared with its other platforms including YouTube, Gmail and Blogger.

Google said the new set-up would enable it to tailor search results better.

But data regulators in France have cast doubt on the legality of the move and launched a Europe-wide investigation.

Google has merged 60 guidelines for its individual sites into a single policy for all of its services.

It means browsing data and web history, which is gathered when a user is signed in with a Google account, can be shared across all of the websites.

Logging out of Google's services will reduce the amount of data stored by the company, although - like many other sites - it will still store anonymous data about web activity.

France's privacy watchdog CNIL wrote to Google earlier this week, urging a "pause" in rolling out the revised policy.

"The CNIL and EU data authorities are deeply concerned about the combination of personal data across services," the regulator wrote.

"They have strong doubts about the lawfulness and fairness of such processing, and its compliance with European data protection legislation."

The regulator said it would send Google questions on the changes by mid-March.

'Strong as ever'

In response, Google's global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer said he was happy to answer any concerns CNIL had.

"As we've said several times over the past week, while our privacy policies will change on 1st March, our commitment to our privacy principles is as strong as ever," Mr Fleischer wrote in a blog post.

The company rejected the regulator's request to hold off on making the changes. Users are being moved on to the new single policy shortly after midnight on 1 March, local time.

Google's business model - the selling of ads targeted on individual user behaviour - relies on collecting browsing information from its visitors.

Until today, this information was kept apart between services.

This meant a search on, for example, YouTube, would have no significance on what results or advertising you would encounter on another Google site like Gmail.

The new agreement, which users cannot opt out of unless they stop using Google's services, will mean activity on all of the company's sites will be linked.

Many websites and blogs in the technology community have given guidance for users concerned about how their browsing history will be used.

They suggest users can access, and delete, their browsing and search history on the site by logging in to google.com/history.

A similar page for YouTube viewing and search history can also be accessed.

Users can see which Google services hold data about them by viewing their dashboard.

'Advertiser interests'

In preparation for the policy change, Google displayed prominent messages notifying visitors about the plans. A dedicated section was set up to provide more details.

However, campaign group Big Brother Watch has argued that not enough has been done to ensure people are fully aware of the alterations.

A poll of more than 2,000 people conducted by the group in conjunction with YouGov suggested 47% of Google users in the UK were not aware policy changes were taking place.

Only 12% of British Google users, Big Brother Watch said, had read the new agreement.

The group's director Nick Pickles said: "If people don't understand what is happening to their personal information, how can they make an informed choice about using a service?

"Google is putting advertisers' interests before user privacy and should not be rushing ahead before the public understand what the changes will mean."

A poll of more than 2,000 people conducted by the group in conjunction with YouGov suggested 47% of Google users in the UK were not aware policy changes were taking place.

Only 12% of British Google users, Big Brother Watch said, had read the new agreement.

The group's director Nick Pickles said: "If people don't understand what is happening to their personal information, how can they make an informed choice about using a service?

"Google is putting advertisers' interests before user privacy and should not be rushing ahead before the public understand what the changes will mean."



News by BBC

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Thursday, January 05, 2012

Google Punishes Itself For Breaking Its Own Rules

web browser
Google Search Engine
Type 'web browser' or 'Internet browser' into Google's search bar and you'll notice something missing from top results: Google's own popular browser, Chrome.

Google is purposely demoting search results for Chrome, after Aaron Wall of SEO Book revealed that the company appeared to have paid for sponsored posts promoting its browser. The company said it will demote Chrome for at least 60 days.

The marketing campaign, which was first reported at SEO Book, pointed out that bloggers were being paid for generic posts linking to a video promoting Chrome. The sponsored posts fall afoul of Google's own policy of paying for links:

Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site's value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.

However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results.

Google maintains it did not approve the campaign. “We have consistently avoided paid sponsorships, including paying bloggers to promote our products, because these kind of promotions are not transparent or in the best interests of users,” Google said, according to the Washington Post. “We’re now looking at what changes we need to make to ensure that this never happens again.”

As Search Engine Land reports, Google says it's being harsher on itself than other offenders: "While Google did not authorize this campaign, and we can find no remaining violations of our webmaster guidelines, we believe Google should be held to a higher standard, so we have taken stricter action than we would against a typical site," part of its statement read.

But Google has leveled harsh punishments in the past: When the New York Times revealed JC Penny was using a 'link scheme' to come up first in search results, Google quickly plummeted their search rankings, sounding a warning to others about repercussions of trying to game Google's system.
News by Huffingtonpost