Effective March 1, 2012, Google will put in place a unified privacy policy that will replace over 60 different privacy policies across Google and cover multiple products and features. The move, while presented as an upgrade in order to "create one beautifully simple and intuitive experience across Google", is necessitated by Google's new plan to link user data collected across 60 Google products such as Gmail, YouTube and web searches. The data merge is scheduled to take effect on March 1, 2012 and users will not be allowed to opt out of the change. The merger of data collected across Google's email, video and social-networking services will allow Google to target search results and advertising.
Many critics have raised privacy concerns over Google's new data merge practices and privacy policy, including some U.S. lawmakers. As internet companies try to gleam more information from their users, they are likely to be met with increased scrutiny from regulators who are concerned about consumer privacy. Some Google senior executives believe the regulators have gone too far in proposing certain measures which could "break the internet". At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Google's chief legal officer raised concerns about the EU's proposed privacy directive requiring explicit user consent to be obtained by website operators for the use of cookies.
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