Google’s new privacy policy kicks in on March 1st. According to their announcement, the new policy makes possible for Google to integrate their different products more closely.

So, instead of having a separate privacy policy for Youtube, Calendar, Gmail, Search, Analytics, Picasa, Docs, Adwords, etc etc there will be one account and one policy covering (almost) all Google products.

On Feb 22nd, the Electronic Frontier Foundation announced that “EFF isn’t happy with Google’s plan to expand its use of the information it gleans about you”. Helsingin Sanomat (the biggest newspaper in Finland) picked the story today and strongly suggests that you erase your Google web history now.

Eh. Why?

I don’t see how this policy change affects the well-known fact that if you choose to use Google’s free products, you agree that Google gathers data about you and uses these data to further develop the products, to provide a better user experience, and – yes – to serve accurately targeted ads.

However, having so many Facebook friends point out this story made me curious.

First, I went to see my personal web history at https://www.google.com/history. The list of my past searches sure is extensive, totaling to 24k searches or, on average, 13 Google searches every day for the past 5+ years. :)

Second, I Googled (irony?) to find out more. The first link explained the issue

As I understand it, Google is changing it’s privacy policy so that my personal search history (which was previously kept separate), will now be tied to my Google profile for other Google products (Google+, Gmail, Google Voice, etc.). In other words – my search history will now be associated with my actual name and personal phone number.

Ok, I can see why that’s an issue for some. Maybe it should be an issue for us all? I am quite happy with having Google point out the links that I’ve visited in the past and push the interesting (for me) links up on the search results page.

I’m not going to delete my search history. Are you and if yes, I’d love to hear why?

P.S. If you want to save your search history before erasing it, there’s a tool for that at Data Liberation Front (that’s a Google product, btw)