After years of complaints, Google decided that it would change its privacy policy in the U.K. to better protect its users. This change occurred after a series of regulators argued that Google's attempts at providing a simplified version of terms and conditions ended up leaving them less than effective.
The agreement to change the policy was announced by the U.K. Information Commissioner's Office on Friday.
The decision would require Google to make changes to how it collects, uses and communicates user data by June 30 or it will be penalized by the U.K. But that won't be the end. Google will have to continue to adjust its policy over the years in order to make up for any worries the regulators may have.
This is a particularly smart move on Google's part since it originally summarized all 70 of its service's privacy policies in one small statement. However, it might not be one that deserves explicit praise.
"Privacy advocates howled at what was seen as a whitewashing attempt for making more use of user-data, not helped by Google explicitly spelling out that it would be sharing personal information between services," Slash Gear reported.
If Google can fulfill all of its policy requests, then its terms will be in line with the U.K. Data Protection Act and Google will receive no penalties.
It's unclear if any policy changes Google makes in the U.K. will affect Google's privacy policy in other European countries or in America.
