Advertisement

California privacy chief weighs in on Google home-page flap

Share

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Here’s an update to our earlier post about privacy groups saying that Google was breaking California law by not putting a link to its privacy policy on Google.com.

Joanne McNabb, chief of California’s Office of Privacy Protection, was less certain. She said the difficulty in answering questions such as whether a reasonable person would notice the privacy policy (one of the options that state law offers in dictating where to put it) are why ‘it makes more sense not to focus on nitpicky statutory requirements.’

Advertisement

Consumers who haven’t lost money or property have no standing to sue over unfair business practices, which would be the standard way to enforce the state law. District attorneys or the attorney general could sue, but no such officials had consulted with McNabb’s office as of today.

The point, McNabb said, is to try to establish best practices. And a link from the home page is ‘beyond a best practice,’ she said -- it’s standard practice.

McNabb praised Google for prominently featuring its policy when consumers are signing up for a service such as Gmail. Showing the policy then is at least as important as linking to it from a website’s front page, she said. Still, she said, ‘I don’t know why they wouldn’t want it on their home page.’

-- Joseph Menn

Advertisement