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Ever since Google acquired the ad network Doubleclick, they have been under strong scrutiny from privacy advocates. Even when they reduced the amount of time that they store user cookies and opened their public policy blog, people were still not entirely comfortable with the idea of Google knowing exactly what they like to search for and having an advertising network to act on it.

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In another move towards transparency, Google has opened up a YouTube channel devoted to talking about their privacy policies. Taking a page from Common Craft, their first video is a “plain English” discussion of exactly what Google collects from users and how they use it.

Some other videos include a few Harvard generated video shorts about how web Cookies work and a clip from a conference featuring Peter Fleischer, Google’s Privacy Council.

What does this mean for you and I?

Not a whole lot. What it implies, however, is that Google is preparing itself for a long public relations battle. As the company continues to aggregate greater quantities of information and allows developers to play with that data more easily, questions will be raised as to whether we can trust them with this much information.

So watch the videos and tell me what you think. It’s still early in the channels history, but do you think this is just a perfunctory gesture designed to take the winds out of the sails of the detractors or is it something more?

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