Google has been hammered by complaints recently, notably when it was accused of violating the privacy of Apple Safari users, as this article notes. The company is actually creating a privacy team, including a “privacy engineer” to ensure that privacy risks are eliminated.
Assigning a team to handle privacy issues might seem a bit extreme, but for Google privacy breaches are a no-win. If users’ privacy is breached by others, it constitutes a security problem, and if Google is accused of doing so, they could face a lawsuit. In the latter case, there will have to be a fine balance taken as part of Google’s competitive advantage is its ability to tap into the information it has about its users’ habits.