Google products may be free, but they will cost you. On January 24, 2011, via blog, Google announced that it will consolidate its privacy policy across all of its products, effectively sharing patterns of usage between products such as G-mail, YouTube, Blogger, Google+ and Google Search when you are logged into one of its online products.

The new privacy policy will go live on March 1, 2012 and impact over 60 products. For many business users of Google products, usage is without individually negotiated agreements with Google. Instead, standard user agreements are agreed to by the user at the time of setting up a given product account. Now, those who seek to access Google products such as Blogger discover that they have to agree to the new privacy policy changes or discontinue product use.

“It's big business at its best,” says Norman Teague, CEO and designer at 22b Design in Chicago. “If they have given you everything you have for free and then ask for your data to continue to market its commercial services, 60 to 70 percent of the people will agree. I don't think it's fair, but I don't completely depend on Google for my business.” For Teague, the 22b Design blog at Blogger supplements the design company's website and other marketing tools.

Google's business purpose for aggregating user data across product channels is driven, at least in part, by its commercial advertising dealings, the primary source of its income. Maybe it is no coincidence that Google is placing its algorithm on user-data steroids. The privacy policy announcement comes on the tail of Facebook's IPO buzz, one of Google's biggest market competitors in the online advertising market.

To add to the wind of changes, the European Commission announced its official data protection rules the day after Google's privacy policy announcement. The so-called “right to be forgotten” rules will go into effect in all 27 countries of the European Union during 2014, pending the European Parliament's approval and assuming there will be no challenges by a member-nation to the EC's competency to create multinational privacy laws.

While European Union member-nations rejected the concept of an EU Constitution, the basis of privacy rights in the United States is based on constitutional law. In the 1965 landmark case of Griswold v. Connecticut, the US Supreme Court recognized privacy as embodied in the US Constitution. Though not expressly articulated in the text, the Court held that the right to privacy was implied through other express constitutional protections. In Griswold, the Court held that the plaintiff had a constitutional right to privacy and, as a result, the Connecticut law prohibiting use of contraception was an unconstitutional violation of the plaintiff's constitutional right to privacy.

Proponents of the new combined privacy policy look to greater user efficiency. For example, a user may be able to receive a calendar alert on an Android phone for a meeting scheduled in Google Calendar. By pinpointing the Android user's location through GPS technology, the smart technology can alert the user to leave now or risk being late to a meeting across town. Law enforcement agencies would be delighted to receive so much aggregated information from one warrant.

Google is not a novice to privacy criticism. Of particular concern to privacy advocates is online use of personal information that can include religious and political affiliations. For example, why are those Obama ads appearing on YouTube when you are watching a video on a wholly unrelated topic? Confidential medical facts or even ethnic and racial background are additional areas of privacy concerns. Google states that it will not give this type of information to advertisers and has, in fact, developed an engineering team called the Data Liberation Front to keep certain data from its algorithm. Additionally, services like Google Wallet, which must comply with financial data regulations, will be among the few products where users will have the opt-out option.

The Google privacy policy changes have also ruffled U.S. legislators pens. A rare bi-partisan letter was sent to Google inquiring into exactly what information it will collect across its business channels. The correspondence from the lawmakers requests a reply by February 16.

Congressmen Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, have asked the Federal Trade Commission to probe Google's recent move against its March 2011 settlement agreement with the FTC related to charges of mishandling user information by not giving users the opt-out option when it launched Google Buzz, the now defunct social network.

“This new policy would allow Google to follow the activities of users across nearly all its services, including G-mail, Google Search, Google+ and YouTube,” Markey and Barton said in a letter today to FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. “This new policy and omission of a consumer opt-out option on a product-by-product basis raises a number of important privacy concerns.”

The Internet is expanding our analysis of the right to privacy and the right to be forgotten. While Google provides users free use to services, its business model relies on having access to individual user data for customized ads. A tangled web, indeed.

This article is for information only and should not be used as a substitute for legal advice.