After it was repeatedly criticized by the privacy advocates for not including a Privacy link to its home page, the biggest search engine decided this weekend to replace the word Google with a link to its Privacy page.

Last month several privacy advocacy groups have sent a petition to Google over the lack of visibility of its privacy policy on the Google home page. They have asked 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.

Initially, Google said that its privacy policy is easily accessible to users, and available to anyone through the “About Google” link.

 “Google values our users' privacy first and foremost. Trust is the basis of everything we do, so we want you to be familiar and comfortable with the integrity and care we give your personal data. We added this link both to our homepage and to our results page to make it easier for you to find information about our privacy principles,” wrote Marisa Meyer, VP Search Products & User Experience, on Google official blog.

She also explained that the replacement was made after the Google’s co-founders , Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have requested to keep the homepage word count unchanged at 28.

The new “Privacy” link will direct the users to Google’s Privacy Center, which was improved earlier this year, with videos and articles about the privacy of specific services such as Gmail.

Last month, due to a large number of privacy complaints, Google  decided to make a change in its Street View Internet map program.The company’s plan involves the development of a facial-recognition algorithm which will scan all of Google’s photos and automatically blur the faces.