Google's Chief Privacy Officer and Head of Competition Law to Leave

TapTechNews June 5th news, according to Forbes' report today, Google's Chief Privacy Officer KeithEnright will leave the company after serving for 13 years, but Google has not yet formulated a plan to replace him as the company is reorganizing the team responsible for privacy and legal compliance.

Two people familiar with the matter said that employees have known the news of KeithEnright's impending departure in mid-May. It is reported that this senior chief privacy officer is deeply loved and respected by employees. He led the Google privacy team through the years when data processing practices were strictly scrutinized by legislators, regulatory agencies, and civil courts.

Not only the Chief Privacy Officer, but also Google's head of competition law, Matthew Bye, will leave after serving for 15 years, which is at a 'critical moment' when Google is facing antitrust.

Google spokeswoman Jenn Crider confirmed that the above two executives will leave later this year and no one will take their places. She said in a statement, 'As the innovative services that we launch and operate increasingly involve intersecting obligations and expectations, we are also constantly improving our legal, regulatory, and compliance work. Our recent changes will increase the number of people in the company engaged in regulatory compliance work.'

In recent years, Google's privacy issues have been the focus of attention from all walks of life, as user data is crucial to Google's annual revenue of more than 307 billion US dollars (TapTechNews note: currently about 2.22 trillion yuan).

The report mentioned that KeithEnright's departure is part of a 'broader reorganization' of Google's policy and privacy team. The company told Forbes that the reorganization is to transfer the privacy policy work to various product and engineering teams rather than a single office. At the end of last month, Google laid off several members of its legal investigation team, which is responsible for handling user data requests from law enforcement agencies, courts, and the public.

In the past year and a half, Google, like other tech giants, has also experienced large-scale layoffs. By the end of the first quarter of this year, Google had more than 180,000 full-time employees, a year-on-year decrease of more than 5%.