Google to address Analytics privacy concerns
Google has had a few run-ins with privacy advocates in the past regarding how the company managed user data. It seems like the company wants to change its image by starting with Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is that stat tracking tool that collects traffic behavior for a particular site. According to Google Analytic’s blog, Amy Chang, Group Product Manager posted that the team is hard at work on developing a plug-in that would allow users to opt out of being tacked by Google Analytics.
She also indicated that the team has been exploring ways to offer users more data privacy. Engineers on the Analytics team are currently working to finalize the opt-out functionality. Apparently, the goal is to make this feature live in a few weeks.
Chang wrote:
Over the past year, we have been exploring ways to offer users more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics. We concluded that the best approach would be to develop a global browser based plug-in to allow users to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics.
Its interesting to see Google suddenly shifting more focus than usual to user data privacy. Google Buzz is a clear example of where the company had very little regard to private user information being publicly shown. After receiving negative criticism with Buzz, Google eventually rectified the privacy issue.
As PC World pointed out, despite the valiant effort, there just doesn’t seem much value in Google Analytic’s opt-out functionality as the traffic data is not something that is publicly available. Also, the main audience for the data is the site owners.
Making it easier for users to opt-out of traffic analysis could make things more difficult for site owners who want to study what needs to be improved. However, I believe this is a good sign that there is some kind of a corporate mandate to focus more on privacy at Google than in the past.
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