As you may have heard, today sees the launch of a new, simplified Google privacy policy. This policy does not affect Google Apps for Business users, and nothing has really changed, but it’s worth exploring further.

On March 1st 2012, Google’s controversial new privacy policy will come into effect. If you are using Google Apps for Business, Google will continue to maintain your data in strict compliance with the confidentiality and security obligations provided to your domain.

Amit Singh, vice-president of Google Enterprise said: “Enterprise customers using Google Apps for Government, Business or Education have individual contracts that define how we handle and store their data. As always, Google will maintain our enterprise customers’ data in compliance with the confidentiality and security obligations provided to their domain. The new Privacy Policy does not change our contractual agreements, which have always superseded Google’s Privacy Policy for enterprise customers.”

So, how could the new privacy policy affect business users? Well, if you permit your Google Apps users to access additional Google services for your domain, they will separately receive notifications communicating the new policy. The services that are not included with Google Apps, such as You Tube, Google Maps and Google+, are subject to the new privacy policy.

If you’d like to find out more about how this might affect you. we’d be happy to chat .

You can view Google’s new privacy policy at https://www.google.com/policies.