"Google's New Privacy Policy: When Consumers' Worlds Collide, the Company Stands to Profit." Knowledge@Wharton, The Wharton School of Pennsylvania, February 15, 2012.
From the article: On March 1, the Mountain View, Calif.-based Internet giant plans to toss out more than 60 different privacy policies and consolidate its services under a single set of guidelines. The harmonization will remove separation between YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Google search and other Google products, meaning that the company will be able to use data it collects from users in one area across all of its platforms. The goal, as Google tells it, is to "create one beautifully simple, intuitive user experience" that treats consumers "as a single user across all our products."
"The reason this becomes a non-trivial piece of news is because our data can now be used out of context from what might have been expected when the user first provided the information," notes Anindya Ghose, a visiting professor at Wharton and co-director of New York University's Center for Digital Economy Research. "That is, data provided in one setting might now be used in a different setting. It is precisely this data sharing across contexts that creates privacy concerns." Read more
