Google revising privacy policies to personalise services

Google says it is revising its privacy policies and changing how it used data from users of its services to provide more personalised search results and advertisements.

The Mountain View, California-based internet giant said the changes were designed to enhance user experience across the various Google products, ranging from web search to Gmail to Google+ to YouTube.

Google said it was combining over 60 privacy policies for its various services into a single policy that would come into effect from 1 March.

"We're rolling out a new main privacy policy that covers the majority of our products and explains what information we collect, and how we use it, in a much more readable way," according to Alma Whitten, Google's director of privacy, product and engineering, who wrote in a blog post.

"We believe this new, simpler policy will make it easier for people to understand our privacy practices as well as enable Google to improve the services we offer," she added.

According to Google, regulators globally had been calling for shorter, simpler privacy policies. The internet company said it would inform users of the changes by email and with a notice on the Google.com home page.