Google managed to upset several privacy advocacy groups over the lack of visibility of its privacy policy on the Google home page. As a result, they sent the company a petition on Tuesday, asking Google to submit to the California law, which requires a direct link to its privacy policy on its homepage.

The petition was signed by representatives from Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, the World Privacy Forum, Consumer Action, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and the Consumer Federation of California.

However, Google’s point of view says otherwise: according to a statement released by the company, its privacy policy is easily accessible to users, and available to anyone through the “About Google” link. Furthermore, Google says that by adding it, it would change the purposely plain home page.

According to California’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003, all companies need to put their privacy policy on their home page. However, Google is not completely ignoring the law, which also states that the privacy policy can also be placed where a reasonable person would notice it.

Consumer groups believe Google’s refusal to change the display of its homepage outrageous, and against the California law.

At the end of the day, it all seems to be a matter of interpreting the law. While privacy advocacy groups want the word “privacy” to be visible on Google’s home page and at the same time accessible with only one click, Google says the two clicks are also acceptable, under the same law.

Google showed no signs that it has any plans of adding a direct link to its privacy policy on their home page. Furthermore, the company added that anyone who doesn’t know how to find the link can simply type the words “Google privacy policy” and the search engine will find it for them.