Google Responds To Privacy Critics with Link to Policy

Google has placed a link to its privacy policy on its home page at the end of a 30-day rule under the California Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003. The countdown was triggered by a letter to Google from policy groups led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. EPIC had been counting down the days on its Web site. To appease privacy advocates, Google has added a privacy-policy link to its home page. Google had previously said it didn't want to clutter its page. Led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), several privacy groups, including the California-based Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, the World Privacy Forum, Consumer Action, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the ACLU of Northern California, and the Consumer Federation of California, sent a letter to the search-engine giant on June 3. The letter notified Google it was in violation of California law for not posting the link. The groups cited the California Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003. That law requires commercial Web-site operators who collect personal information to link to a privacy policy from the home page. They went so far as to mock up a Google home page with the privacy link. (TopTechNews.com 7/07/08)