July 04, 2008
By Peter Sayer

For Google, ready Privacy: That could be the subliminal message Google wants to send by replacing its name on its famously spartan home page with a link to its privacy policy.

Last month, privacy organizations wrote to Google CEO Eric Schmidt asking the company to link to its privacy policy from its home page. Including the link on the home page is good practice -- and also mandated by California law, the organizations said. On Thursday, Google acceded to the request, putting the word "Privacy" at the foot of its home page and linking it to its privacy information pages.

The link replaces the company's name next to the copyright notice, leaving the number of words on the home page unchanged. Google had previously declined to make the change to its home page, saying that users appreciate the lack of clutter there. Microsoft and Yahoo both include privacy links on their search pages, while Ask.com added a link to its privacy policy on June 18.

The order to remove the company's name to make way for the privacy link came right from the company's founders, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience Marissa Mayer explained in a posting to the company's blog. "Larry and Sergey told me we could only add this to the homepage if we took a word away -- keeping the 'weight' of the homepage unchanged at 28," she said.