Official Google Blog: Updating our privacy policies and terms of service.
Privacy policies are actually a big deal. They’re the EULA of websites and often go ignored, resulting in outrage from user bases who never read it in the first place and are infuriated that the company behind the site followed through on what was outlined.
Perhaps an even bigger deal is the alteration of an existing privacy policy. Google appears to be going about that in the right way, and that’s great.
If you use Google products as much as I do, you should be aware of their goals as a company, which are outlined to an extent in their privacy policy. It’s important to understand the changes taking place to evaluate whether or not you’d like to continue using said products.
Additionally, let Google’s action be an example: are you maintaining an effective privacy policy on your properties? 37signals recently went through quite a bit of PR surrounding this issue, something to take note of.