On Tuesday, Google posted its formal response to the Jan. 26, 2012 letter from a bipartisan group of House members voicing concerns about the revised privacy policy Google announced on Jan. 24, 2012.  In his Jan. 30, 2012 letter to the House group, Pablo Chavez, Google’s Director of Public Policy, stressed that the company would not be collecting any additional personal data from users and that users could control Google’s collection and use of their personal data in several ways – including by turning off their search history, accessing many Google products and services without logging in, and setting up multiple accounts to limit cross-product sharing. (more…)

A bipartisan group from the House of Representatives sent a letter today to Google Chief Executive Officer Larry Page asking that he answer a series of questions about the privacy changes Google announced earlier this week.

Google introduced its changes in a Jan. 24, 2012 post on the Official Google Blog titled “Updating our privacy policies and terms of service”, which began with a discussion of the merits of “shorter, simpler privacy policies” and went on to explain that “[o]ur new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services.  In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.”  (more…)