Google’s battle of beauty versus law

The California Online Privacy Protection Act states that a commercial website that collects data about it’s users must,

“conspicuously post its privacy policy on its Web site”

This basically means ‘on the home page’. So, it turns out that for five years the entire world hasn’t noticed Google has been breaking the law. Google’s home page footer contains links to ‘Advertising Programs’, ‘Business Solutions’ and ‘About Google’. If you navigate to ‘About Google’ you will then find a link to Google’s privacy policy.

Google are not letting down, they want to keep their home page ‘beautiful’. We think there is a hidden agenda. Occasionally the news will talk about privacy issues with Google. The “Google knows everything about you” story. Most peoples reaction is shock and horror due to media exaggeration. But a few hours later they’ll have forgotten and will continue to use Google. Having the word privacy at the bottom of the Google page would remind the user of the hyped Google privacy issues. Which is something that Google wants to avoid.

But essentially there are no benefits for Google including this link except staying within the law. It may simply be a case of Google trying to be different, after all, almost every commercial website includes this link in their footer.

It is unlikely that Google will give in, however we will be on the lookout for a privacy policy link on the home page.