Google to Unify Privacy Policy Across Products

Google Inc said it will revamp its privacy policy and terms of service to unify the policy across a wide array of its online offerings to make it shorter and more uniform.

The online search giant said on its official blog that it expects to roll out the revised guidelines in over a month's time, consolidating more than 60 separate privacy policies it is using for a range of its online products.

Google said it has currently more than 70 privacy policies covering all of its products.

The announcement comes days after Google's decision to personalize its search feature drew a storm of controversy by critics concerned by privacy and anti-trust issues.

U.S. regulators are reportedly looking into whether Google manipulates its search results to favor its own products and have expanded the probe to include Google+.

"Regulators globally have been calling for shorter, simpler privacy policies - and having one policy covering many different products is now fairly standard across the Web," Alma Whitten, Google's director of privacy, product and engineering, wrote in blog post.

The changes will take effect on March 1, the blog post said. (Reporting by Himank Sharma in Bangalore; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier)