The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has required Google to sign a formal undertaking to improve the information it provides to people about how it collects personal data in the UK after concerns were raised around changes to the company’s privacy policy. The ICO found that the search engine was "too vague "when describing how it uses personal data gathered from its web services and products.

Google introduced a new privacy policy in March 2012 combining around 70 existing policies for various services, but the ICO ruled that the new policy did not include sufficient information for service users as to how and why their personal data was being collected.

Google has now signed an undertaking committing to make further changes to the privacy policy to ensure it meets the requirements of the Data Protection Act and to take steps to ensure that future changes to its privacy policy comply, including user testing.

The ICO has already worked with Google to ensure a significant number of changes to the policy. The search engine must now make the agreed further changes by 30 June 2015 and take further steps over the next two years.

Regulators in Spain and France have fined Google 900,000 euros ($1.02 million) and 150,000 euros respectively over the privacy policy, small penalties relative to Google's scale.