• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, February 3, 2012

Already on the defensive over privacy changes, Google this week dug a deeper hole for itself in the nation’s capital.

After a two-hour grilling on Thursday, House lawmakers deemed the search giant a little standoffish. "At the end of the day, I don't think [Google’s] answers to us were very forthcoming necessarily in what this really means for the safety of our families and our children," Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.) told to members of the press, as reported by TheHill.com.

“Google’s efforts to assuage concerns in Washington over proposed changes to its privacy policy don’t seem to be going well at all,” notes AllThingsD.

Bono Mack is the chairwoman of the Energy and Commerce Committee's Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over data privacy issues.

At issue is Google’s recently announced decision to consolidate the privacy policies of its various services into a single document. “Congress is concerned about how much involvement users have in protecting their own privacy,” writes Gizmodo.

“The change allows Google to share user information between its services,” as The Hill notes. “Words in private emails could influence search results on YouTube, for example.”

Google defends the move as way to simplify users’ privacy settings, but lawmakers don’t agree. "By being more simple, [the privacy policy] is actually more complicated," Bono Mack said. "The concern of Congress is how much active participation does a user have to do to protect their own privacy.”

Going forward, public hearings on Internet privacy are planned for this spring,USAToday.com reports, citing comments by Bono Mack. Appearing confident, Google spokesman Chris Gaither said: "We're happy to discuss our updated privacy policy with Congress."