Google’s chief privacy officer will leave the company after 13 years, and Google has no plans to replace him.
Keith Enright will remain at the company until the fall, a Google spokesperson told Business Insider. One source told Forbes that the announcement of his departure was met with “shock” from employees.
“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 said in a LinkedIn post Tuesday. “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 leads the global privacy team in crafting and implementing privacy and data policies across Google’s products and services. In 2018, he testified about consumer data privacy to the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, defending Google’s privacy policies while acknowledging the company’s past mistakes.
Google’s head of competition law, Matthew Bye, will leave after 15 years at the company.
Google confirmed the departures in a statement to Business Insider. Both Bye and Enright will not be replaced. Instead, a Google spokesperson told Forbes that 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 BI in a statement. “Our latest changes will increase the number of people working on regulatory compliance across the company.”
Enright’s departure comes as Google’s privacy policies have been scrutinized
In December, Google settled a lawsuit that alleged the company was secretly amassing data from Chrome users who thought their browsing activity was private, or as Google calls it, in Incognito mode.
Google agreed to delete billions of user data records as part of the settlement.
On Monday, 404 Media published a leaked copy of an internal Google database that revealed thousands of privacy-related incidents from 2013 to 2018. The 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.
A Google spokesperson told Business Insider that the leak news and announcement of Enright’s and Bye’s departures are unrelated.
Google has also tried 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.
