"At Google, we're committed to transparency and choice" - those are the words at the top of the Google's Privacy Center centre page. However, Google's transparency has recently come under fire because of their privacy policy.Under law, specifically the California Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003, any commercial website run from the golden state that collects personal information must provide a direct link to their privacy policy from its homepage.
Until recently, Google did not provide such a link, as they wanted to keep their pages as uncluttered as possible. At the time a spokesman for the company, Steve Langdon, said: "By having a link to our privacy policy one click from our home page, and because the privacy policy is easily found by using the search box on the home page, we comply with this statute."
Many were unsure about this stance. Chris Hoofnagle, a senior fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology said: "I think Google is in violation.
"It's pretty obvious that the first significant page on Google is the search results page. But that page doesn't contain the privacy policy or a link to it either."
It now seems that perhaps Google was also unsure of that stance and what appeared to be an attempt to prove it was not circumnavigating the law. On 3 July, a day before America's Independence Day, Google cracked and fell in line with its state counterparts.
However, it wasn't as easy as simply adding the word 'privacy' with a link to their policy because Google maintained that they stay with their 28-word homepage (if you're signed out, Google is already your homepage and they don't have a promotional line running beneath the search box). The top end for the homepage has seen it displaying 61 words, a huge increase from their most spartan 13. To make way for this new word, it was clear that one had to go. In the end, they plumped for the word 'Google' which was situated next to the ©2008 (one word) in the footer.
Other search engines, such as Microsoft and Yahoo!, include privacy links on their search pages and Ask.com added a link last month when they also issued an open letter pointing at the privacy practises of their competitors.
