Google Wishes You Merry Christmas

Lack of Information at North Pole Leads Google to Draft New Privacy Policies #

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – December 15, 2009 UTC – As the holiday season continued, Google Inc. today announced that it is modifying its privacy policies in a new two-part Google Santa initiative.

The inspiration for the Google Santa project came from the realization that Santa has very little information to go on when judging whether people are naughty or nice. Now, thanks to Google’s advanced data mining systems, Santa will be given access to your search history, a log of all the web sites you visit which use Google Analytics, any passwords needed to access them from your Google Toolbar, the contents of your Gmail account, and complete transcripts of any Google Talk IM conversations made in the last year.

“Santa has a clear need for this information,” said Google founder Sergey Brin. “His intuition is unmatched, but his ability to sniff out naughty people will be dramatically improved now that he can search your e-mail and check whether you’ve visited any naughty web sites.”

“Do no evil,” added Google CEO Eric Schmidt, “Because otherwise we will find out, and we’ll tell Santa.”

Google also announced phase two of Google Santa, to launch in January. A new area of the Google Shopping site will enable users to sell coal in a global marketplace.

“By aggregating individual users’ stock of fossil fuels,” explained Google co-founder Larry Page, “we will enable ordinary people to participate in the global energy economy by selling their pieces of coal to their local electricity company.”

“In addition,” he added, “a modest 70% cut of the proceeds will be used to purchase carbon offset credits, making the overall operation carbon neutral, and helping me feel better about my personal Boeing 767.”

About Google Inc. #

Google’s innovative web technologies log the lives of millions of people around the world every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program, which is the largest and fastest growing in the industry, provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while recording the browsing patterns of users across almost the entire World Wide Web. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and the North Pole. For more information, visit www.google.com.