Network World — How you feel about Google's newest information-sharing policy all boils down to how comfortable you are with Google following your every move online.

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Think that's an exaggeration? Consider a user who has a Gmail account, who looks for videos on YouTube and who uses Google as their primary search engine. Under the previous rules, Google would present advertisements for users in their Gmail accounts based on frequently-found keywords found throughout emails. Under the new arrangement, Gmail users will see advertisements based on frequently used search keywords, whether they come from users' Google or YouTube searches.

For its part, Google says this new information sharing will improve Google users' online lives in a few key ways. First, it will consolidate Google's privacy policies from a whopping 70 down to a more manageable number. Second it will provide users with more relevant advertisements than if Google had just simply given users ads based on their email keywords or search keywords by themselves. And finally, it will let Google better integrate its services to, say, send you a notification that you're late for a meeting if Google's location data shows that you're significantly far away from where your meeting is due to take place.

Google also says it still does not sell personal information, nor does it share it externally without users' permission unless compelled by a court order. Google also says that users will still be able to use their Ad Preferences Manager to stop Google from sending them certain unwanted advertisements. And of course, users will still be able to use Google's Data Liberation website to remove all their data from Google products if they so choose.

Cindy Cohn, the legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says Google's new policies are essentially just natural expansions from its current data tracking policies and notes that the major difference here is that Google is tearing down some of the walls of separation between its own services.

"It has always been the case that Google kept effectively linkable records of our uses of Gmail, Search, Maps and Market for Android, and other services," she says. "In a couple of cases, Google had some internal practices of not linking your browsing history and YouTube history, to other data -- and those internal walls at the company are now gone."

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