What Google's New TOS Means to You

(disclosure: I'm long GOOG)

If you're like most (read:all) people, then you spend about as much time reading Terms of Service agreements as you do flossing your neighbor's Rottweiler's teeth. Unfortunately, companies know this and bury all kinds of unsavory things in their TOS. The biggest TOS "scandal" recently was on Instagram, where they basically came out and said that all of your photos now belong to them and that you shouldn't be surprised or alarmed when you saw a picture of yourself on an ad for hemorrhoid ointment.

Well, Google has done something similar with its newly revised TOS, it's something many of you won't like (but many others won't even care about), and fortunately Google has made it very easy to opt out of. So props to GOOG for not being creepy, even if they were trying to push this through on the sly.

What the new policy comes down to is this: Google has been collecting profile information forever, and now knows you pretty well. They also know who your friends are and who you influence. So now they're going to make you famous by plugging your profile pic (among potentially other things about you) into advertising targeted at your friends, family, and associates.

Like I said, for many of you this is no big deal. For others, it represents an invasion of privacy. And I can see both sides. I don't really care who knows about the stuff I buy, and if my mug can sell some shit and in some small way increase Google's market value, then it behooves me to play along as a shareholder. On the other hand, you probably don't want the whole world knowing that you're a connoisseur of sex dolls or something equally embarrassing (no judgment).

So if you want to opt out of the program, Google makes it pretty easy. Just make sure you're logged into your Google account and then click here:

https://plus.google.com/settings/endorsements?hl=en

Then uncheck the box labeled, "Based upon my activity, Google may show my name and profile photo in shared endorsements that appear in ads." which is checked by default. Then be sure to hit SAVE.

All things being equal, I think it will be pretty interesting to see how this plays out. I'm certainly more likely to buy something like music if it's endorsed by someone whose taste I know doesn't suck. But this is also right on the creepy line for me. I don't quite know why, but I'm also not a thousand percent behind the whole thing. I'm leaving my box checked for now, but we'll see what happens.

What do you guys think? You giving up the goods to the GOOG, or is this a straight privacy violation? Do you at least give them props for making opting out easy, even if they did try to hide it in the TOS? And is this just the wave of the future? I mean, we've all gotten used to FREE on the Internet so much so that we bitch the minute a site wants to charge us for something. These guys all have to eat, too. Is this all just fair use?