Google will soon know far more about who you are and what you do on the Web.
The Web giant announced Tuesday that it plans to follow the activities of users across nearly all of its ubiquitous sites, including YouTube, Gmail and its leading search engine. Google has already been collecting some of this information. But for the first time, it is combining data across its Web sites.
Consumers won’t be able to opt out of the changes, which take effect March 1. And experts say the policy shift will invite greater scrutiny from federal regulators of the company’s privacy and competitive practices.
Consumers could also benefit, the company said. When someone is searching for the word “jaguar,” Google would have a better idea of whether the person was interested in the animal or the car.
Google can collect information about users when they activate an Android mobile phone, sign into their accounts online or enter search terms. It can also store cookies on people’s computers to see which Web sites they visit or use its popular maps program to estimate their location. However, users who have not logged on to Google or one of its other sites, such as YouTube, are not affected by the new policy.
The change to its privacy policies come as Google is facing stiff competition for the fickle attention of Web surfers. It recently disappointed investors for the first time in several quarters, failing last week to meet earnings predictions.
In the most glaring example that indicated the company didn’t have a good grasp on what its workers were doing, Google acknowledged in May that one of its engineers had created a program that vacuumed up potentially sensitive personal information, including e-mails and passwords, from unsecured wireless networks while Google cars cruised neighborhoods around the world. The vehicles were dispatched primarily to take photos for Google’s online mapping service, but they also carried equipment to log the location of Wi-Fi networks.
The incident, which some critics have derisively labeled as “Wi-Spy,” was caused by “an engineer’s careless error as well as a lack of controls to ensure that necessary procedures to protect privacy were followed,” Canada Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart concluded in a report this week.
Several other countries have skewered Google for scooping up 600 gigabytes of data — equivalent to about six floors of an academic library — from Wi-Fi systems for more than two years before detecting a problem five months ago in response from to an inquiry from regulators in Germany.
Google initially said it had only captured fragments of people’s online activities, but Canada’s investigation determined that entire e-mails, passwords and website addresses had been obtained and stored. In confirming Canada’s findings Friday, Google said it wants to delete all the Wi-Fi data remaining on its computers as quickly as possible, but must hold on to most of the information while authorities in different countries conduct their own investigations.
So far, Google has purged the Wi-Fi data it got in Ireland, Austria, Denmark and Hong Kong after gaining clearance from regulators in those countries. It still has the data from more than 20 other countries, including the United States, where a coalition of state attorneys generals has been looking into the breach.
While some countries have asserted Google’s Wi-Fi snooping was illegal, the company has maintained it didn’t break any laws even as management apologized for its bad behavior.
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