How Google keeps your secrets private

How does a company that collects so much information from its users keep all that data private?
Meet Alma Whitten, Google's director of privacy.

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At the end of a miserable 2010 filled with privacy blunders including the disastrous Google Buzz fiasco, Google appointed Whitten to the position of privacy director. Since then, Whitten has instituted what she calls a "culture of privacy" at the company. So far it has been paying off.
Over the course of the past year, Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) has released new privacy tools, put in place a multifaceted structure to ensure users' privacy, and built in fail-safes to make sure nothing falls between the cracks.
"We've made incredible progress on this over the past year," said Whitten in an interview with CNNMoney that took place last month. "We've built the car, and now we're just doing the tune-up."
As part of that tune-up, Google on Tuesday made the major announcement that it has streamlined its privacy policy. Instead of 70 policies across each of its products -- search, maps, Gmail, etc. -- Google will consolidate most of them into a single, shorter, privacy agreement. Whitten wrote in a blog post Tuesday that the move is designed to add clarity to Google's privacy stance.
Google has begun notifying its users of the changes. The company also began a massive publicity campaign this month, putting advertisements about privacy in major cities throughout the country.
The company is ramping up its privacy initiative as the Federal Trade Commission is keeping a watchful eye on the search giant. Last March, Google agreed to submit an independent privacy review to the government for the next 20 years after the company inadvertently revealed some users' e-mail contact lists to the public in its February 2010 release of the Buzz social network.

Click here to continue reading: http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/26/technology/google_privacy/index.htm