Check Your Inbox: Google to Issue Subscribers Its New Privacy Policies...and They're Forced to Accept

Effective, March 1, 2012, Google will have new privacy policy and terms of use in place that some state will lead to increased tracking but Google says does not deviate from its core principals.

Google announced Tuesday that it would be getting rid of its more than 60 different privacy policies, merging them all into one that it says is "shorter and easier to read."

The New York Times BITS blog reports that Google will be emailing each user of the policy update, in its "biggest notification effort ever." This announcement comes just a couple weeks after Google launched its Search, Plus Your World feature without much notice to the user, creating a bit of angst.

Watch Google's video detailing some of the updates:

The Times has more:

The new privacy policy makes clear that for people logged into a Google account, Google can use information shared on one service in other Google services.

“If you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services,” Alma Whitten, Google’s director of privacy for product and engineering, wrote in a company blog post. “In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.”

The change will also allow Google to do other useful things, Ms. Whitten wrote, like letting a user know she might be late for a meeting based on her calendar and current location, or correcting the spelling of a friend’s name in a Google search.

The catch, the Washington Post reports, is that there is no opting out of accepting these policies.

On Google's blog, Whitten writes, that Google will continue to refrain from selling your information or sharing it to externally without permission.

Still,  Ryan Calo, director for privacy at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, said the company needs to be careful how it uses the data so that it helps users, without revealing sensitive information.

"If it creeps people out, then they need to be aware of that," he said.

Calo does believe that Google is trying to do the best it can to simplify its privacy policy and make it transparent without bogging down people with pages of legalese. The privacy documents now run about 10,000 words, down from 68,000.

Earlier this week, Twitter, Facebook and MySpace teamed up to launch a search tool called "Don't Be Evil" to help users "transform" search results that may be focused on content only from Google+.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.