Google to lose privacy chief in September, will not replace him

Google has announced that its Chief Privacy Officer, Keith Enright, will leave the company in September, a decision that has reportedly left many employees in “shock,” according to a report by Forbes. Enright has been with Google for 13 years and served as the Chief Privacy Officer since 2018.

"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," Enright stated on Tuesday in a post on LinkedIn. "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."

In his role, Enright led Google’s global privacy team, overseeing the development and implementation of the company’s privacy and data policies. Notably, he testified before a US Senate Committee in 2018, where he defended Google’s data privacy policies and acknowledged the company's past mistakes, stating, “We acknowledge that we have made mistakes in the past, from which we have learned, and improved our robust privacy program.”

Following Enright's announcement, a Google spokesperson indicated that the company does not plan to directly replace him. Instead, Google will restructure its policy and privacy work to involve multiple teams.

Google also acknowledged that Matthew Bye, its head of competition law, would also be leaving the company after 15 years.

“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. Our latest changes will increase the number of people working on regulatory compliance across the company,” a Google spokesperson told Forbes. 

“We'll continue to establish and maintain advanced privacy and data protection controls for our services, with input from our dedicated legal and product privacy teams, as well as hundreds of people across the company," the spokesperson added.

This announcement coincides with significant layoffs at Google, reducing the company's workforce by 5 percent over the past year. This trend also mirrors similar workforce reductions at other major tech companies.