The Clash Over Privacy

Google argues that it has simplified its privacy policy and made it much more transparent. Critics argue that, through its stripped down simplicity, Google is taking user information and sharing it across platforms and uses, thereby denying the user choices as to how specifically allow use of particular information.



This represents a fundamental and ongoing conflict as to what privacy means in an online environment of increasingly sophisticated applications, cookies and integration of services. The market's drive for targeted and behavioral marketing and analytical services comes up against traditional understandings of privacy which often aren't stirred until the reality is revealed to the user.


What the public really wants, and what the courts and Congress will say, are all still in play and the technology is likely to stay ahead of the statutes and the concerns.