Google’s homepage now has a new adjunct – a privacy link, which leads to the company’s privacy policy. The addition comes following pressure from privacy organizations who insisted that the search giant’s Privacy Center, be made to fit somewhere on its first page.
According to the California Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003, it is mandatory to have a privacy link on the homepage and Google’s failure to do so in the years bygone raised controversies regarding the company’s violation of the law.
Google however said that its privacy policy was quite easy to locate, either on the page called “About Google” or by searching for “Google privacy policy” on its search engine. The company had refused to place the privacy link on its homepage reasoning that too much clutter would cause inconvenience to the users.
Joanne McNabb, the chief of California’s Office of Privacy Protection, alleged that according to her agency, Google must have a link to its privacy policy on its home page.
Privacy groups soon took notice and shot blogs urging Google to change its practices.
Google made space for the link by removing the company's name next to the copyright notice. The order to remove the company's name to make way for the privacy link came right from the company's founders, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience Marissa Mayer explained in a posting to the company's blog.
"Larry and Sergey told me we could only add this to the homepage if we took a word away -- keeping the 'weight' of the homepage unchanged at 28," she said.
The copyright notice ‘© 2008 Google’ at the bottom of the page, has now become ‘© 2008 - Privacy.’ Ms. Mayer wrote that it is implied that Google is the one copyrighting the page.
Microsoft and Yahoo already provide a direct access to their privacy policies through a link on their search pages.
Just another way Google can
Just another way Google can cover itself.