It seems the announcement by Google of a new privacy policy and corporate direction is creating a lot of buzz.  Honestly, if you didn't see this coming you must not be paying attention to the world around you.

Google is a company but it's also a product.  Gmail, YouTube, Google+, Google Earth.  They are all Google.  Merging your accounts and related information into one global identity for all Google product offerings was going to happen.  It had to.  There is no way the company could maintain the current system of multiple profiles.

What does this mean for you?  It's good if you use lots of Google services and want the advertising on those services to be more targeted to the "holistic" you and not only the part of you that particular service knows.  Maybe you only watch comedy clips on YouTube.  That's who YouTube assumes you are...a comedy only person.  Having a single expanded profile shows your interest in other areas and allows advertisers to market in a more targeted fashion.

The change though is bad if you try to keep some separation in different areas or are trying to limit the sources of consolidated information such as viewing habits, who your friends are, where you work, etc.  This is especially true for those organizations which have standardized on Google Apps for their business.  It will become much harder to distinguish between a person's business life and personal life.  I mean really, are you going to sign out of your work Google account and into your personal account just to watch a couple of videos on your lunch break?

Whether we like it or not, it is getting more difficult to have the professional and personal life separation that was afforded to generations before us.  I'm doing everything I can to maintain what little separation I have left.  Are you?