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Google Books Privacy Policy
October 13, 2011 | View archived version
The main Google Privacy Policy describes how we treat personal information when you use Google's
products and services, including Google Books. This additional policy for
Google Books does three things: (1) it highlights key provisions of the main
Google Privacy Policy in the context of the Google Books service, (2) it
describes privacy practices specific to the Google Books service, and (3) it
describes planned privacy practices for services proposed in the Google Books
legal settlement, which is
currently awaiting court approval.
Key provisions from the Google Privacy Policy
All of the provisions of the Google Privacy Policy apply to the Google Books service. Among other
things, this means:
- We do not share your personal
information with third parties, except in the narrow circumstances described
in the Privacy Policy, such as emergencies or in response to valid legal
process. For purchased books, we provide publishers with sales information,
but do not provide personal information. For purchased books where we
acted as the publisher's agent, we provide the publisher with information
on the taxes we collect including the state, city and zip code from
the purchaser's billing address. Google Books offers books for sale
not only from books.google.com, but also through resellers as well (for
example, for purchase off a reseller's website or reading device).
Also, our application developer partners use Google services to integrate
with Google Books and provide you access to Google Books on their services.
When you purchase a book through a reseller or use services of an application
developer, you will need to log in with your Google Account information
or create a Google Account if you don't have one. Once you have logged
in, if you choose to synchronize your Google Books account with your
account with the reseller or application developer, we will share your
Google Books information (e.g., all of your library shelves, titles,
annotations, last five pages read for each book), except information
regarding the seller(s) from whom you purchased your books, with the
reseller or application developer. The application developer's or reseller's
treatment of that information (and any other information you submit
to the reseller or application developer directly) will be governed by
the application developer's or reseller's privacy policy, not ours; please
make sure to review any applicable privacy policy when you choose to
purchase through a reseller or use services of an application developer.
- When you use Google Books,
we receive log
information similar to what
we receive in Web Search. This may include information such as the query
term or page request (which may include book titles or specific pages
within a book you are browsing), Internet Protocol address, browser
type, browser language, the date and time of your request and one or
more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser or your account.
- Unless you are logged into
your Google Account, your activity on Google Books will not be associated
with your Google Account.
- You may choose to use optional
features within Google Books (such as My Library or purchased books)
or other optional Google services (such as our Web History service) that require a Google Account and which
may receive and store information from Google Books in association with
your Account. Books features that store information with your Account
will show you the information you have stored and allow you to delete
it (unless we are required to keep it by law or for legitimate and limited
business purposes such as fraud investigations). However, you will not
be able to delete the record of your purchase transaction (including
the title of the book) from your Checkout account history.
- Google uses the information
it stores for the purposes discussed in the Google Privacy Policy, including
to improve our services (for example, to help customize recommendations
for Google products or services you may be interested in), for security,
and to report on aggregate user trends.
- Usage data from the Books
product is subject to the same security standards that are outlined
in our main Privacy Policy.
Practices specific to the current Google Books product
The privacy practices that are specific to Google Books are:
- To fulfill contractual commitments
to rightsholders who license us books, we enforce certain security limits
(for example, to prevent abusive sharing of purchased books and to enforce
page view limits on some book previews), and we also enforce limits
on the numbers of browsers or devices that can access an account during
a given period of time. In order to enforce limits on numbers of devices,
we will store the unique ID numbers of your devices on our servers.
You can delete a device ID number when you wish to stop using that device.
- You will need to have a Google
Account in order to purchase books because account information is necessary
to provide access to users who bought the book. We limit the information
(such as books titles) we provide to credit card companies, and enable
you to delete purchased books from your Google Account. However, you
will not be able to delete the record of your purchase transaction (including
the title of the book) from your Checkout account history.
- In order to enable consistent
reading position across devices and provide useful navigation within
a book, we store the last five pages (only) in each book a user has
viewed with the user's account. We also store pages viewed for security
monitoring and/or if the user elects to use the Web History service.
- Special legal privacy protections
for users may apply in cases where law enforcement or civil litigants
ask Google for information about what books an individual user has looked
at. Some jurisdictions have special "books laws" saying that
this information is not available unless the person asking for it meets
a special, high standard such as proving to a court that there is a
compelling need for the information, and that this need outweighs the
reader's interest in reading anonymously under the United States First
Amendment or other applicable laws. Where these "books laws"
exist and apply to Google Books, we will raise them. We will also continue
our strong history of fighting for high standards to protect users,
regardless of whether a particular "books law" applies. In
addition, we are committed to notifying the affected user if we receive
such a request that may lead to disclosure of their information; if
we are permitted to do so by law and if we have an effective way to
contact the user, we will seek to do so in time for the user to challenge
the request.
Practices specific to services proposed under the pending settlement agreement
Google has reached a settlement agreement in copyright litigation which, if approved, will
authorize additional services for users in the United States as part
of the Google Books product. Those additional services have not yet been designed but we know that they will honor our existing
privacy commitments listed in this Privacy Policy, as well as the following:
- The Book Rights Registry created
under the settlement will receive aggregate, non-personally identifiable
information about usage of Google Books. Like any other third party,
the Registry will not have access to individual user information unless
it goes through proper legal processes or in other narrow circumstances
set out in the Privacy Policy. Google will not require users to create
Google accounts, or in any way register their identity with Google,
in order to use the following planned services:
- Free online viewing of pages
from books covered under the settlement
- Use of the Institutional Subscription. Schools or other institutions that sign up
for subscriptions will be able to authenticate users based on the user's
or the institution's IP address, or using other technologies that allow
Google to confirm that a user is part of a subscribing institution without
knowing who that user is.
- Use of Public Access Service
terminals in public libraries. Users will not need to register with
Google to use these terminals. Google will receive IP address and cookie
information that may identify internet connection or browser, but not
the actual user.
- Users will need to have Google
Accounts in order to purchase books because such information is necessary
to provide access to the user who bought the book. However, we plan
to build protections to limit the information (such as book titles)
available to credit card companies about book purchases, and to enable
you to delete or disassociate the titles of books purchased from your
Google Account.
- Any publicly available product
authorized by the settlement will have a privacy policy comparable to
policies you can see in our Privacy Center today for other Google
products. That policy, in combination with the main Google Privacy Policy,
will explain what information Google receives and stores when you use
the product including any unique identifiers such as your account information,
what we may do with that information, what security standards protect
it against unauthorized access, and what choices you have about data
provided to Google when you use the product as well as information about
our data retention practices.
For additional information about Google
Books and privacy, please see our FAQ.
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