14 DAY TRIAL // It's been a while since Google was criticized by the European Commission for weak guidelines that might affect the consumers' privacy. But Google never accepted this rank and decided to fight against it and, since the accusations were made public, the Mountain View company made efforts to improve the privacy. First of all, it reduced the time required to anonymize the users' search logs to 18 months and it maintained the 24 months period in certain countries with specific laws. Then, it rolled out a privacy blog to keep the customers up-to-date with their latest efforts regarding this matter.
"This will be a great way to talk about many of the incredibly important and challenging global policy issues facing the internet - including privacy, child safety, copyright and content regulation. I really want to ensure that there are contributions by Google Australia to this forum, and would love you to post comments, as these issues affect our Australian users and the Australian community," Rob Shilkin, Head of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs, said today.
Today, the Google representative underlines all these efforts, trying to prove that Google is not a company that doesn't respect the users' privacy. Besides the blog and the anonymity period, Google also joined the Australian Information Industry Association, an organization that tries to influence the public policy and collaborate with the local companies.
As you can see, most of these improvements concern the users of the Google solutions because the Mountain View company must stay in touch with the consumers in order to improve its privacy and impress the EU. However, it's obvious that Google is not satisfied with the European Commission rank and, even if the final results might disappoint many of us, the search giant tries to look like a company that requires the users' approval for important decisions.