GOOGLE AND ZYGOTES: When your products and services are as global as Google's, one way to maintain market growth is to get younger generations hooked. (See: Coca-Cola.) With a headline that's bound to spook privacy advocates, The Information reports (subscription required) that Google is working on ways to make its services more accessible to kids. Features "include a dashboard for parents to oversee their kids’ activities, a child-safe version of YouTube and requiring people who sign up for a Google account on devices powered by Google’s Android software to share their age."
Current rules laid out in the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act restrict over companies like Google from collecting personal information from users under the age of 13. But as GigaOm reports, "millions of young people reportedly use their services under false credentials already." Google's move supposedly offers parents more supervision over their children's online habits. Will they buy in?
