Student Blog Posts
Google Changes Its Privacy Policy Which Causes User Panic
Ashley Peabody
@AshleyPeabody2
In this week’s lectures, we discussed the ethical standards that corporations should establish and maintain when using Social Media. It’s important for corporations to have a clear, well-thought out social media policy that is easily understood both by its customers and its employees. So it comes as no surprise that when Google changed its Privacy Policies late last week, it started a wave of concern for users.
To be fair, Google could have easily kept silent on the changes it made to its policies but it wanted to remain true to one of its core values: “Don’t be evil.” The company released a statement informing users that Google policy changes were now going to release users’ personal information across 60 of its Web services such as Gmail, Google Books, and Google Chrome. Any user with a Google account which is necessary when signing in to other websites like YouTube, must agree to these policies or simply delete all personal Google accounts.
These drastic changes prompted most to applaud Google’s decision to release its policy changes to the public rather than keep them hidden but also left many questioning just how much personal information would be released in to the infinite vastness of the web. On the one hand, I feel we must applaud Google for its use of transparency and staying at least partially true to its ethics and values. By informing its users of the changes, it honored its relationship with users as well as giving them the opportunity to cease and desist all Google accounts that fell under the new policies.
The big questions are: Is Google well within the ethical boundaries of organizations’ use of Social Media and the way they handle users’ private information? Or does the fact that Google has given users an ultimatum to either accept the new policies or leave services provided by one of the biggest search engines seal Google’s fate as an unethical organization? Your thoughts?
Check out this video presented by Ron Charles which highlights Google’s policy changes and how certain users feel about the changes.
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Jakob DancerFeb 3, 2012 at 12:48 pm
I don’t feel this is unethical. Google is a business and wishes to share its information between its different branches to make sharing easier and of course to create a more efficient way to advertise. The company wants to make money and in doing so make life easier for the user secondary. This accomplishes both and yes, information will be used between all Google branches, but does this really hurt? It will make searching more relevant and link profiles more efficiently. No one is ever happy with the words “changing privacy policy” but the truth is it wont matter. People will still continue to use it just as they do Facebook or miss out on the use of the modern day telephone and be left behind. It’s a sacrifice in privacy to keep up with modern efficiency and opportunity. It’s good to monitor the policy to let companies know we are aware of what they are doing, but the end result is that a change in privacy policy rarely affects the user.
Melodie SebleFeb 5, 2012 at 5:14 pm
I think there’s no way Google could have gotten away with not publicizing its policy change. It’s almost inevitable that such a large, prominent organization would need to change its privacy policy, and I don’t see it as anything unusual. I like how they freely supply information about their policy on their sites, because not all online organizations make it so easy to find information about their policies.
Max BarkleyFeb 7, 2012 at 4:12 pm
I agree with Melodie. Google is such a large entity that it has to announce that it’s policy was changed. They are to public and they need to take advantage of the fact that they are leaders of the web industry and the image of today’s media culture.