Google · Privacy Policy

What Google Collects and Why

Google collects a very broad range of information about you — what you search, watch, and buy; where you are physically located; the emails and files you create; your voice and camera input; your health and fitness data if you use those products; and technical details about every device and browser you use. Even when you're signed out, Google still ties data to your browser or device through unique identifiers. All of this data flows together across Google's many services (Search, YouTube, Gmail, Maps, Android, Chrome, Fitbit, Google Home, and more) to build a detailed picture of your interests and behavior, which is used heavily for advertising.

How Your Data Is Used

The main uses are: delivering services, personalizing your experience (search results, content recommendations, ads), measuring how ads perform, developing new Google products, and detecting fraud or abuse. Google explicitly states it uses data "across services and across your devices" — meaning your YouTube watch history can influence ads you see on unrelated websites that happen to use Google's ad network. Google also uses publicly available data and some user data to train its AI models (like Gemini and Google Translate).

Who Gets Your Data

Google shares your data with internal affiliates, service providers who run Google's infrastructure, domain administrators (your employer or school if you use a Google Workspace account), and law enforcement when required. Google says it does not sell your personal information and does not share it in the way the CCPA defines "sharing." However, Google does allow third-party advertisers and measurement companies to drop their own cookies on Google properties and collect data independently. If you're in a Google Workspace account (work or school), your administrator has extensive access to your data.

Your Controls and Rights

Google offers real tools — My Activity, Google Dashboard, Privacy Checkup, and My Ad Center — to review, delete, or export your data. You can turn off personalized ads, pause location history, and auto-delete activity after a set period. U.S. state law residents (California, Virginia, Colorado, and many others) have formal rights to access, correct, delete, and port their data, and to opt out of targeted advertising. Google says it will not reduce your rights under this policy without your explicit consent.