Google's New Privacy Policy May Violate EU Rules

Google's new privacy policy appears to violate the European Union's data protection rules, France's regulator said, just two days before the new guidelines are set to come into force.

Google announced its new privacy policy with much fanfare last month. The rules, which are set to come into force on March 1, regulate how the Web giant uses the enormous amounts of personal data its collects through its search engine, email and other services. However, the EU's data protection authorities are concerned about the privacy effects of the policy and earlier this month asked French regulator CNIL to investigate them. "Our preliminary analysis shows that Google's new policy does not meet the requirements of the European Directive on Data Protection," CNIL said in a letter to Google Chief Executive Larry Page. The agency said Google's explanation of how it will use the data was too vague and difficult to understand "even for trained privacy professionals."