Refer video below on The Google Privacy Channel. In short, it demonstrates the issues that Google and the Internet community are struggling with ... notice how many times Peter Fleischer (Google's Global Privacy Council) goes out his way to explain new advancements in the first half of the video and how they apply only to "unauthenticated search" ... meaning, if you logged in to GMail of any of the other Google products, this doesn't apply ...

There are however, explanations later in the video how you set privacy in EACH of the Google applications, not ACROSS the Google applications.

As described on The Google Privacy Channel / YouTube ... "Peter Fleischer, Google's Global Privacy Counsel, reviews how Google has engaged key privacy issues in 2007 and looks ahead to the obstacles and opportunities of 2008."

There are a few zingers in the video. My favorite is that Google strongly believes privacy does not attach to property ... privacy only attaches to individuals. Except of course, if you allegedly trespass ... refer TechCrunch article - Google Damages Property Values? The debate is around the Google Maps StreetView offering ...

Despite the appearance of Google-bashing, I do like features introduced such as "Off The Record" in chat.

If you have to patience to go to the 25 minutes mark of the video, Google calls for Global Privacy Standards. The challenge being that international privacy standards differ. Some of them, such as the European Community, impact Google.

Data flows are global. Agree. However, global privacy standards and legislation will continue to be behind the rate of technology advancement. The real issue here is for leading technology companies to innovate to protect privacy ... and balance the need to capture massive amounts of data to support their text and ad revenues. You don't need demographics to capture my interests ... Just ask me - and give me the tools to manage my privacy - not on your terms.

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