In an effort to win public favor for a Google Books settlement, Google posted an official privacy policy and held a press conference with organizations that support the proposed settlement it reached with authors and publishers. But new opposition continues to stack up against the search giant.
Since last spring, Google has held discussions with a number of groups about its privacy practices for Google Books. Google has also offered some preliminary thoughts about what privacy protections the company wants to build into services authorized by the settlement.
While Google Books has always been covered by the general privacy policy for all Google services, Google understands that privacy in reading records is especially important to readers and libraries, according to Jane Horvath, global privacy counsel for Google.
A Preemptive Strike
Horvath said Google knows users want to understand how its privacy practices apply to Google Books today and what will happen after the settlement. Google has offered a FAQ that highlights key provisions in the main Google privacy policy for the Google Books service, as well as privacy practices specific to Google Books.
“As we noted in our letter to the FTC, because the settlement agreement has not yet been approved by the court, and the services authorized by the agreement have not been built or even designed yet, it’s not possible to draft a final privacy policy that covers details of the settlement’s anticipated services and features,” Horvath said.
“Our privacy policies are usually based on detailed review of a final product — and on weeks, months or years of careful work engineering the product itself to protect privacy,” she said. “In this case, we’ve planned in advance for the protections that will later be built, and we’ve described some of those in the Google Books policy.”
NWU Fights Back
But the fight isn’t…