Beginning next year, Google plans to create specific versions of its most popular products for those 12 and younger. The most likely products that will be revamped are YouTube and Chrome.

"The big motivator inside the company is everyone is having kids, so there's a push to change our products to be fun and safe for children," Pavni Diwanji, the vice president of engineering charged with leading the new initiative, told USA Today.

"We expect this to be controversial, but the simple truth is kids already have the technology in schools and at home,"Diwanki told USA Today. "So the better approach is to simply see to it that the tech is used in a better way."

This effort comes on the heels of recent kid-centric endeavors undertaken by the tech giant such as its virtual Maker Camp, Doodle 4 Google competition and Made with Code initiative.

"We want to be thoughtful about what we do, giving parents the right tools to oversee their kids' use of our products,"Diwanji was quoted in the report as saying. "We want kids to be safe, but ultimately it's about helping them be more than just pure consumers of tech, but creators, too." 

According to the USA Today report, this idea may well see many hiccups in its implementation. The Federal Trade Commission's Children's Online Privacy Protection Act so far has levied fines against 20 companies in its 15-year history for mining young user information without parental consent. In September, Yelp was fined $450,000 for failing to implement a functional age screen in its ratings app.

"We aren't looking to play gotcha, it's just about kids being protected and promoting business compliance," Maneesha Mithal, associate director of the FTC's privacy and identity protection division told USA Today.

Mithal added in th report that COPPA has been updated a number of times in the past decade to reflect the exponential growth of tech trends. Specifically, the act has been amended to include provisions for everything from geolocation data gleaned from mobile devices to photo- and voice-uploading protocols on social networking sites.

Now days parents are having a tough time keeping track of everything their kids are into tech-wise, said Marc Rotenberg, president of the watchdog group, Electronic Privacy Information Center.

"The prospect of audio-based advertising targeting our children is very real, and that's significant when you're talking about an age group that is very susceptible to manipulation," Rotenberg told USA Today. "The FTC will have to step up on this. I don't think we want a world where our kids are sold things they don't need."

Commenting on these concerns raised by experts, Diwanji told USA Today that as a parent she "is a big believer in coaching moments for kids, rather than just blocking what they can do. I want to enable trust in them. Thirteen isn't some magical number. I want to teach them what's right and wrong, and bring families together using technology."

She further added in the report that user experiences for a range of Google products are ripe for under-13 makeovers. What also is being worked out are the ways in which parents will be able to oversee their child's interactions with Google's technologies, perhaps limiting usage to set time frames.