Google's Privacy Chief to Depart After 13 Years with the Company

Google's Chief Privacy Officer Keith Enright will be leaving the company after 13 years, with no plans to appoint a successor. A Google spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider that Enright will stay with the company until the fall. According to a source who spoke to Forbes, the announcement of Enright's departure came as a "shock" to employees.

Google's Privacy Chief to Depart After 13 Years with the Company
Google's Chief Privacy Officer Keith Enright

Google's Chief Privacy Officer Keith Enright will be leaving the company after 13 years, with no plans to appoint a successor. A Google spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider that Enright will stay with the company until the fall. According to a source who spoke to Forbes, the announcement of Enright's departure came as a "shock" to employees.

In a LinkedIn post, Enright stated, "After over 13 years at Google, I'm ready for a change, and will be moving on this fall, taking all that I've learned and trying something new. I'm incredibly proud of the team we built, and the work we did to keep billions of people around the world safe and in control."

Enright has been leading Google's global privacy team, responsible for crafting and implementing privacy and data policies across the company's products and services. In 2018, he testified before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation about consumer data privacy, defending Google's privacy policies while acknowledging the company's past mistakes.

Google's Head of Competition Law Matthew Bye will also be leaving the company after 15 years. Google confirmed both departures to Business Insider, stating that neither Enright nor Bye will be replaced. Instead, the company will restructure its policy and privacy work to include multiple teams.

"We regularly evolve our legal, regulatory, and compliance work as we launch and run innovative services that comply with a growing number of intersecting obligations and expectations," a Google spokesperson told Business Insider. "Our latest changes will increase the number of people working on regulatory compliance across the company."

Enright's departure comes at a time when Google's privacy policies are under intense scrutiny. In December, Google settled a lawsuit that alleged the company was secretly collecting data from Chrome users who believed their browsing activity was private, or in Google's terms, in Incognito mode. As part of the settlement, Google agreed to delete billions of user data records.

On Monday, 404 Media published a leaked copy of an internal Google database revealing thousands of privacy-related incidents from 2013 to 2018. These incidents included one where a Google speech service logged audio of an estimated 1,000 children for about an hour.

A Google spokesperson told Business Insider that all the incidents have been reviewed and resolved, meaning any private information has been deleted.

Google emphasized that the news of the leak and the announcements of Enright's and Bye's departures are unrelated. The company has also been working to enhance user privacy with its initiative to eliminate third-party cookies in its Chrome browser.

Enright and Bye did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.