Learning a musical instrument is probably on everyone’s to-do list, and I’d wager a vast majority have their eyes on the guitar, including me. Awhile back I borrowed an electric guitar from my friend Nick and immediately began learning basic chords, motivated by the thoughts of becoming a musical prodigy. Of course, after a couple weeks of messing around, the guitar receded into the depths of my closet and began gathering dust.

Until tonight. For some reason I experienced a sudden and rather strong urge to pick it up and give it another shot. I found an app called “Cleartune” which uses your iPhone or iPod Touch to aid in the tuning process. With my newly tuned guitar in hand I searched the seas of YouTube for beginner guitar lessons and came across this fantastic site. It didn’t take long for my fingers to start throbbing; they were being lacerated by the strings as I struggled to get the chords fingered properly, but I powered through the first few lessons.

Thirty minutes later, I can play the D, C, and E chords pretty well. I’m feeling pretty good about learning this time, so I guess this is one of my belated New Years Resolutions as I never did come up with any of those.

Google recently announced a rather extensive overhaul of their privacy policy, and a lot of people are arming themselves with the proverbial torches and pitchforks over the recent changes, citing concerns of corporate espionage of some caliber. As much as I like to humor such hypocritical hivemind thought, as I’ll bet anyone one million dollars they’ve never even bothered to read Google’s current policies in the first place, I thought I’d write up something on the topic.

First, if you haven’t already, take some time to read through Google’s official announcement of the changes, the new policy overview portal, and the actual text of both the proposed privacy policy and terms of service.

This is about consolidation

Google operates an alarming number of services from search tools (web, images, maps, news, videos, books, etc) to communication (Blogger, Groups, GMail, Talk, Voice, etc) to entertainment and media (Picasa, YouTube, etc) and even office and work solutions like Docs, Calendar, and Fusion Tables. Currently, each of those services are treated almost like a separate company; each has its own privacy policy and terms of service, but they all say essentially the same thing, and they all conform to Google’s comprehensive self-regulating corporate philosophies (ten things, software principles, privacy principles, design principles, no pop-ups, and security).

This approach is somewhat complicated. It’s also at odds with our efforts to integrate our different products more closely so that we can create a beautifully simple, intuitive user experience across Google.

(Official Google Blog)

The new privacy policy solidifies and clarifies the policies you’ve already been agreeing to, and incorporates your information stored across Google services into one Google account.

Google is not “tracking” you

One of the major arguments is that by consolidating their privacy policies and terms of service agreements, Google is going to start “tracking you across services,” and you can’t opt-out. This is a very clever use (or misuse) of the word “tracking” meant to mislead you. The entire point of the consolidation is to allow Google services to communicate your data between each other in order to improve your user experience.

Think of it like this. You subscribe to three services: cable television, digital phone service, and high-speed internet, all through one company we’ll call NewAge Technologies. NewAge is treating you as one customer across their different services in order to consolidate your bill into one, as well as to streamline and improve customer support in case you have a problem with your cable or internet. If NewAge had to send you three separate bills for each service, and had three different customer support numbers, you’d probably be frustrated and move to another service provider. This is how Google is operating right now, and what they’re trying to fix.

Whether or not Google’s structuring decisions were good or bad in the past, as they’re expanding and innovating they want to make it easier for them to provide a better service, and the first thing they need to do is treat you as one customer across the board.

Your personal information is safe

Google is one of the more personable corporations, and they’ve managed this by treating their customers and users properly. If you’ve taken the time to read the new privacy policy as well as browsed through their corporate philosophies, you’ll know they explicitly state they will never sell or distribute your personal information to third-parties unless they have your consent or, in the case of analytics, require the affiliate to adhere to their privacy policy and strict confidentiality and security measures (bold emphasis mine):

Google only shares personal information with other companies or individuals outside of Google in the following limited circumstances:

• We have your consent. We require opt-in consent for the sharing of any sensitive personal information.
• We provide such information to our subsidiaries, affiliated companies or other trusted businesses or persons for the purpose of processing personal information on our behalf. We require that these parties agree to process such information based on our instructions and in compliance with this Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.
• We have a good faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request, (b) enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations thereof, (c) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, or (d) protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of Google, its users or the public as required or permitted by law.

If Google becomes involved in a merger, acquisition, or any form of sale of some or all of its assets, we will ensure the confidentiality of any personal information involved in such transactions and provide notice before personal information is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

(Privacy Policy)

The only thing you need to worry about is if you’re breaking the law and a court orders Google to divulge your information. They also state it plainly in their FAQ:

Will Google sell my personal information to third parties?

No. We don’t sell our users’ personal information. It’s simply not how we operate.

(FAQ)

You have nothing to worry about

From a Washington Post article:

“There is no way anyone expected this,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a privacy advocacy group. “There is no way a user can comprehend the implication of Google collecting across platforms for information about your health, political opinions and financial concerns.”

There is no “implication” concerning privacy about Google’s services sharing information with each other. Google is one company that offers access to services from one account, and each of those services have very similar privacy policies. This consolidation is nothing more than Google telling users that their information from different services (which Google already has access to) will serve a better purpose when tied to one account that each service can access.

Google will never sell or distribute your information without your consent, the way it always has been. Nothing is changing except for a consolidation of information. You have nothing to worry about.

Further reading: Forbes: Internet Freak-out Over Google’s New Privacy Policy Proves Again That No One Actually Reads Privacy Policies

Welcome. This is my little slice of the Internet, and I’m not really sure what to do with it right now. In the past I’ve tried blogging and otherwise generating content, but that’s a lot of work. I’m much better at scrolling myself into oblivion on reddit, or looking up funny cat videos on YouTube. That doesn’t require a lot of work, but it does require a lot of time, something which I can provide with ease. Who needs to socialize these days, anyway?

I guess I could tell you a little bit about myself. That’s what people do with personal websites, right? I’m 18, currently attending college for Computer Networking Technology, I’m fairly good with computers, and I enjoy reading. Sometimes I like to write, too, but the occasions in which I’m actually willing to focus and not going to ramble about things for pages are few and far between. Someday I’ll get around to writing a book. It’ll be a best seller.

Media is a big part of my life right now. I have a fairly extensive music library that consists of pretty much everything except country, polka, and pop. I tend to like more depressing and meaningful music, and find the current music trends repulsive. I watch a lot of movies and television shows; some of my favorite movies include Into The Wild, American Beauty, Fight Club, V for Vendetta, Snatch, and It’s Kind of a Funny Story. The list goes on, really. As for television shows, I absolutely love Breaking Bad and Community, and enjoy The Big Bang Theory, Dexter, Firefly, Merlin, Louie, and Arrested Development.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I’m giving blogging another shot, as community college will hopefully be intriguing enough to warrant public rambling. Farewell.