Like probably most of us, I recently got an email from Google alerting me to upcoming changes in their privacy policy. Or, more accurately, Google is giving notice that the individual privacy policies of their dozens of different services will soon be merged into one over-arching privacy policy.

Here's a great article on what it means: How Google's New Privacy Policy Could Affect You @ Scientific American.

What this seems to mean is that it's not just the "Privacy Policy" that is being merged, but rather the entities themselves are no longer considered distinct. The lines between the different Google services are being erased. Gmail, Google Docs, Android devices, Youtube, Chrome, etc etc... your account information, usage data, preferences, may now be consolidated into a single profile. All the data held by Google's various services will be pooled, cross-referenced, searchable and usable by Google in ways not seen before.