Google Privacy Shift Makes Android an Info Gold Mine

Google's controversial new privacy policy could have an especially big impact on people carrying around Google in their pockets. Google will in March begin sharing info it collects across its platforms when users are signed in—and Android users essentially always are. "I guess it's theoretically possible to use an Android device without being logged on," one privacy advocate tells the Washington Post, "but that wouldn't be much of a smartphone."

Google disputes the notion that the change will be especially important for Android users, noting that the phone won't collect any more data than it already does. And that's true, analysts say, but Google will now be able to use the data in more ways—and that alone should make Android, which has never been a terribly profitable product, into a very valuable one. (More Google Android stories.)