Google debunks Microsoft’s claims about its new privacy policies

Google’s had a rough week since it first announced revisions to its privacy policies — the government’s keeping watch and Microsoft just released ads explicitly mentioning Google as a way to play off consumer fears about the privacy of their data. Google’s not taking it lying down, though — following up on ads it started running today, Google has posted a long rebuttal of many claims that have surfaced, with a special focus on Microsoft’s commentary. Google refutes a number of claims, including that it makes money selling personal information and that it changed its privacy policy to make it harder for users to control their information and make collected data more valuable to advertisers The main message coming from Google is that privacy controls are not changing at all, just that it’s streamlining the policy (much like it did in 2010).

Google also takes a moment to call out Microsoft for its fear-mongering ads at the end of the blog post, noting that it doesn’t make judgements about other companies policies or controls, unlike Google’s friends in Redmond. However, Google doesn’t shy away from throwing some mud back back by noting that Microsoft doesn’t offer any data liberation or dashboard services for users to see all the personal information they’ve committed to Microsoft’s services. While Google’s trying to hard to lay fears to rest, it wouldn’t surprise us if there’s more controversy between now and March 1st.