Privacy laws recap
Are Google and other search engines doing anything illegal? For the most part, the answer is no. Virtually no laws exist in the U.S. to limit websites’ abilities to gather information on their users. Some laws, such as the California Online Privacy Protection Act, require websites to disclose their privacy policies, but such laws do not make any recommendations as to what the privacy policies should be.
However, some search engines, including Google, may be in violation of the California law’s guidelines of what a site must do to “conspicuously post” its policy. The law states that a site that collects data about its users must display a link to the privacy policy on its home page or “in the case of an online service, any other reasonably accessible means of making the privacy policy available for consumers of the online service.”
It’s hard to determine exactly what constitutes a “reasonably accessible means.” Google has a link on the home page to an “About Google” page, and only when a user follows this link does a link to the privacy policy appear at the bottom of the page. Would a reasonable user necessarily think to go to “About Google” to learn about the privacy policy? And maybe, not seeing privacy as one of the topics listed in the main body of the “About” page, the user wouldn’t think to look for it at the bottom. I think it would make a lot more sense for Google to simply include a link to the privacy policy at the bottom of every page. There doesn’t seem to be a good reason for leaving this link off the home page. But because of the vague wording of the law, it is almost impossible to determine whether or not Google is meeting its legal obligations.
Source: California Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003 <http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=bpc&group=22001-23000&file=22575-22579 http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=bpc&group=22001-23000&file=22575-22579>