It was late January when news of Google’s new privacy policy taking effect on March 1, 2012 broke, drawing plenty of criticism and concerns.  With March 1 just a day away, consumers are faced with a tough choice: to stay or not to stay with Google.

And that seems to be what the Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz is suggesting when he stated that Google is giving their subscribers “a fairly binary and somewhat brutal choice” pertaining to the new Google privacy policy.  Google is transparent in what they are planning with their new privacy policy and everyone seems to be thinking the same thing: you can’t complain, since Google told you their plan.

Last week, an alliance of 36 state attorneys general sent a letter to Google CEO Larry Page demanding the assurance of the search giant that their new policy doesn’t jeopardize consumer privacy.

Concerns over the issue was addressed by Google in an e-mail sent to AllThingsD, “Our updated Privacy Policy will make our privacy practices easier to understand, and it reflects our desire to create a seamless experience for our signed-in users.  We’ve undertaken the most extensive notification effort in Google’s history, and we’re continuing to offer choice and control over how people use our services.The privacy policy change mainly affects users with a Google Account, and you can continue to use many of our services — including Search, Maps and YouTube — when you are logged out.”

Bill For Taxing Violent Games Trashed

If lawmakers can’t do anything about Google’s new privacy policy, at least they were able to prevent placing tax on violent video games.  In a vote of 5-6, the bill’s approval was probably affected by State Representative William Fourkiller’s sudden change in the severity of the penalty.

Originally, the bill stated that there will be a 1% sales tax imposed on games marked as “Teen” and “Mature.”  The 1% tax will proceed to programs battling bullying and childhood obesity.  But even if the nature of the game is non-violent but marked as “Teen,” it will be taxable and this drew a lot of criticism for the bill.  Because of this, Fourkiller removed the tax entirely and the revised bill would instead create a task force dedicated to analyzing the impact of video and computer games on children.  But the said task force was also criticized, since it wasn’t clear as to who would conduct the analysis, and the extent of the study since the word “violent” was omitted in the revised bill, meaning everything is up for scrutiny.  Things could lead to a lengthy study that could possibly bear little fruit, as the direct relation between violence in the real world and playing violent games hasn’t been proven yet.