Google has announced that it has updated its privacy policy and that the new version will come in effect starting October 3rd. The actual policies haven't changed, but the text has been simplified and some bits added to make the whole thing easier to read and understand by the regular user.

"Long, complicated and lawyerly—that's what most people think about privacy policies, and for good reason. Even taking into account that they’re legal documents, most privacy policies are still too hard to understand," Mike Yang, Associate General Counsel at Google, wrote.

"So we’re simplifying and updating Google’s privacy policies. To be clear, we aren’t changing any of our privacy practices; we want to make our policies more transparent and understandable," he explained.

One of the biggest changes taken towards simplifying the policies is getting rid of some of them. Most of Google's products are governed by the global Google Privacy Policy, but many have additional policies of their own.

Google is now getting rid of those for 12 products. This should make it easier to know which policy applies. Google notes that since many services share information and work together, they should have the same policies.

The second big change is to the main policy which is getting a rewrite. Some of the legal jargon is gone and some redundant parts have been removed. New content has bees added as well, where further details were needed, but, overall, the new text is smaller and easier to understand.

The new privacy policy is now available for review and will be implemented starting October 3rd. Google is providing a FAQ for the changes which should cover any uncertainties.

Google is also posting the full text of the new policy for users to get familiar with. Finally, there is also a version which shows exactly what has been removed and what has been added.