Boris Roessler/European Pressphoto Agency
8:15 p.m. | Updated Google said Tuesday that it would revise its privacy policies and terms of service, to make them shorter and more readable and to change the way Google can use information that users provide.
To alert users about the changes, which take effect March 1, Google plans to undertake its biggest notification effort ever via e-mail and announcements on its various sites, according to a person briefed on Google’s plans.
Though the announcement comes two weeks after Google was hammered by critics for the way it integrated Google Plus posts into search results, Google said that it had been working on the new policies for a long time and that recent events had nothing to do with the timing.
Still, the biggest change in the new policies goes to the heart of privacy concerns about Google’s new search feature. Google Plus posts that appear in search results are only from people whom Google users have chosen to follow on Google Plus and who have shared specific items with them or made them public. But critics said that it violated users’ privacy because when people posted on Google Plus, they did not know that the posts would show up in search results.
The new privacy policy makes clear that for people logged into a Google account, Google can use information shared on one service in other Google services.
“If you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services,” Alma Whitten, Google’s director of privacy for product and engineering, wrote in a company blog post. “In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.”
The change will also allow Google to do other useful things, Ms. Whitten wrote, such as letting a user know she might be late for a meeting based on her calendar and current location, or correcting the spelling of a friend’s name in a Google search.
Last year, Google settled with the Federal Trade Commission over privacy misrepresentations it made related to Buzz, a social networking tool. It agreed to start a privacy program, submit to audits and pay a fine for any future misrepresentations. One watchdog group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said this month that it thought Google’s new social search tool violated that agreement.
Google also shrank and rewrote its privacy policies and terms of service — documents that on many Web sites are known for being too long, convoluted and bogged down by legalese. Google’s main privacy policy, which had more than 70 separate documents for various products, will now cover 60 products in one document. A dozen, like Wallet or Chrome, will still have separate privacy policies. The terms of service are also consolidated and explain legal terms.
Between now and March 1, as Google notifies users of the changes, they will be able to view and compare the old and new policies.
Google’s new efforts build on changes it made to simplify its privacy policy in 2010. Other companies, like Facebook, have also tried to shorten their policies, as industry regulators demand clearer and more concise statements.
Google emphasized that its core privacy guidelines will not change. For instance, it does not sell personal information or share it externally except in the case of a valid court order, and it allows data liberation, which means Google users can export information to other services.
The changes come a week after Google unveiled an ad campaign in United States newspapers, magazines, Web sites and subways to educate people about privacy. The campaign had already been running in Europe, where Google has faced more criticism and investigation of its privacy practices.