Google's chief privacy officer is leaving and will not be replaced

Google's chief privacy officer, Keith Enright, will leave the company in September. He was involved with Google for 13 years and was responsible for Google's privacy policy. The company no longer wants one department to be responsible for all privacy policies.

It company confirms to Forbes, among others that Enright will leave the company and will not be replaced. Google says this change is a result of policy changes, where privacy policies are no longer the responsibility of one central department, but rather individual product and development teams should be responsible for them. According to Google, this should ensure that more people within the company work on complying with legislation, in collaboration with teams specifically focused on legislation and privacy.

Enright had been chief privacy officer since 2018 and represented the company in investigations by, for example, the US Congress, the Federal Trade Commission and various data regulators worldwide. In addition to Enright, Matthew Bye, responsible for compliance with competition law within Google, is leaving. Bye worked at Google for fifteen years. Forbes also reports that Google fired “several” employees within its legal research team late last month. This team handles data requests from police services and users, for example regarding cases of child abuse and kidnapping.