Google and Changes to Your Privacy

Internet users with any form of account take heed—your relationship with the company is about to change.

The Mountain View-based company announced Tuesday that as of Mar. 1, 2012, their "Terms of Service" (TOS) agreements, of which they have more than 70 that cover all of their products, will be consolidated into a new catch all TOS and a new "Privacy Policy."

According to Google, the goal is to simplify the user experience through greater integration of their products. A user is anyone that has to sign on to use a service.

"Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you've provided from one service with information from other services," said Alma Whitten, director of privacy, product and engineering in the blogpost. "In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience."

This Apple-like ecosystem that Google appears to strive for could make using their products easier. But while Google claims the changes are about the end-user, some do question the company's real intent.

The race to get and keep users continues to heat up and there's possibly nothing more valuable than someone's personal information and online identity. Especially if the user gets the service for free.

The more Internet companies know about a user's online habits like type of hardware used to log-on, location, search habits, online purchases, the more value a company has to advertisers, investors and shareholders. That's the type of information that Google will be able to collect seamlessly from users across all of there platforms in a little more than a month.

Users who want to opt out of the TOS, can't, unless they close their Google account.

Still, many note that most people who use online services like Google, Facebook, Twitter among others, don't care or worry about their privacy as it is. If they did, the most common "password," wouldn't be "password."

So, perhaps Google isn't up to any evil. Or is it?