With the European Union’s General Data Protection
Regulation set to go into effect on May 25th, services across the board
are updating their policies to comply with the new privacy rules — and
today, Google joined the crowd. In a post today, the company laid out a new privacy policy detailing exactly how and why Google collects the data that powers its various products.
While there are no significant changes in services or
permissions, Google’s new language is notably less dense than its
current policy, and intended to comply with the GDPR’s requirement
for “clear and transparent notice” of how data will be used. The policy
has also been augmented with explanatory videos and illustrations,
because, as Google admits, “a visual description can be easier to
understand than text alone.” The result is an unusually clear view of
how Google manages user data.
“We collect information to provide better service to all
our users,” one section reads. “When you’re not signed into a Google
Account, we store the information we collect with unique identifiers
tied to the browser, application, or device you’re using. This helps us
to do things like maintain your language preferences across browsing
settings.”
Google is also updating the options for exporting data.
Google has offered data exports through Google Takeout since 2011, but
the company is now expanding that service to include more services and
finer grained controls. The company is also backing the Data Transfer Project, an open-source system that would make it easier to move data between networks seamlessly.
Along with the blog post, Google is sending out email
notifications to every single Google account, which number in the
billions. The emails will be rolling out for days to come, given the
scale of the notification.
Correction: Google is
updating its Privacy Policy today. An earlier version of this article
incorrectly referred to a new Terms of Service.
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