The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) in the UK has given Google three months (or until September 20) to change its privacy policy or else it could leave itself “open to the possibility of formal enforcement action”, which some say just translates to “paying a fine.” The ultimatum was issued after the country’s data watchdog found that the company’s updated policy from March 2012 “does not provide sufficient information to enable UK users of Google’s services to understand how their data will be used across all the company’s products.” Simply put, ICO wants Google to make its privacy policy “more informative” for its users.

Image source: telegraph.co.uk

This move by the UK government is similar to what the French and the Spanish government did Last month after both ruled that the company had breach their data protection act. At the same time, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands also launched their own enforcement actions against the ad giant.

Google on the other hand responded to the aforementioned countries’ letters with a statement saying, “Our privacy policy respects European law and allows us to create simple, more effective services. We have engaged fully with the authorities involved throughout this process, and we’ll continue to do so going forward.”

But as The Guardian points out, Google’s statement doesn’t really explain how its privacy policy can “respect” EU law considering that five major EU governments have found it objectionable.

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