Google has updated its privacy policy and now says employees, contractors and others with access to customer information may be fired or prosecuted if they violate confidentiality obligations; previously in that regard, it said only that employees would have access to the information only on a "need to know" basis, CNET reports. The revision also says customers should read the privacy practices of affiliated sites because they may be different from Google's.

Kevin Bankston, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the changes don't seem substantive and he remains concerned that Google has boatloads of customer data and can do whatever it wants with it. Brad Hill, author of Google for Dummies, said "I fail to see why Google gets disproportionate attention on this matter. I don't think Google knows more about me than Yahoo does…If Google is a threat to old-world privacy values, it is only because it is part of the Internet."