Your relationship with Google
These terms help define the relationship between you and Google. Broadly speaking, we give you permission to use our
services
if you agree to follow these terms, which reflect
how Google’s business works and how we earn money
. When we speak of “Google,” “we,” “us,” and “our,” we mean Google LLC and its
affiliates
.
What you can expect from us
Provide a broad range of useful services
We provide a broad range of services that are subject to these terms, including:
- apps and sites (like Search and Maps)
- platforms (like Google Shopping)
- integrated services (like Maps embedded in other companies’ apps or sites)
- devices (like Google Nest)
Many of these services also include content that you can stream or interact with.
Our services are designed to work together, making it easier for you to move from one activity to the next. For example, if your Calendar event includes an address, you can click on that address and Maps can show you how to get there.
Develop, improve, and update Google services
We’re constantly developing new technologies and features to improve our services. For example, we use artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide you with simultaneous translations, and to better detect and block spam and malware. As part of this continual improvement, we sometimes add or remove features and functionalities, increase or decrease limits to our services, and start offering new services or stop offering old ones. When a service requires or includes downloadable software, that software sometimes updates automatically on your device once a new version or feature is available. Some services let you adjust your automatic update settings.
We maintain a rigorous product research program, so before we change or stop offering a service, we carefully consider your interests as a user, your reasonable expectations, and the potential impact on you and others. We only change or stop offering services for valid reasons, such as to improve performance or security, to comply with law, to prevent illegal activities or abuse, to reflect technical developments, or because a feature or an entire service is no longer popular enough or economical to offer.
If we make material changes that negatively impact your use of our services or if we stop offering a service, we’ll provide you with reasonable advance notice, except in urgent situations such as preventing abuse, responding to legal requirements, or addressing security and operability issues. We’ll also provide you with an opportunity to export
your content
from your Google Account using
Google Takeout,
subject to applicable law and policies.
What we expect from you
Follow these terms and service-specific additional terms
The permission we give you to use our
services
continues as long as you comply with:
We also make various policies, help centers, and other resources available to you to answer common questions and to set expectations about using our services. These resources include our
Privacy Policy
,
Copyright Help Center
,
Safety Center
, and other pages accessible from our
policies site
.
Although we give you permission to use our services, we retain any
intellectual property rights
we have in the services.
Respect others
We want to maintain a respectful environment for everyone, which means you must follow these basic rules of conduct:
- comply with applicable laws, including export control, sanctions, and human trafficking laws
- respect the rights of others, including privacy and intellectual property rights
- don’t abuse or harm others or yourself (or threaten or encourage such abuse or harm) ? for example, by misleading, defrauding, illegally impersonating, defaming, bullying, harassing, or stalking others
- don’t abuse, harm, interfere with, or disrupt the services ? for example, by accessing or using them in fraudulent or deceptive ways, introducing malware, or spamming, hacking, or bypassing our systems or protective measures. When we index the web to bring you search results, we respect standard usage restrictions that website owners specify in their websites’ code, so we require the same when others use our services
Our
service-specific additional terms and policies
provide additional details about appropriate conduct that everyone using those services must follow. If you find that others aren’t following these rules, many of our services allow you to
report abuse
. If we act on a report of abuse, we also provide the process described in the
Taking action in case of problems
section.
Permission to use your content
Some of our services are designed to let you upload, submit, store, send, receive, or share
your content
. You have no obligation to provide any content to our services and you’re free to choose the content that you want to provide. If you choose to upload or share content, please make sure you have the necessary rights to do so and that the content is lawful.
License
Your content
remains yours, which means that you retain any
intellectual property rights
that you have in your content. For example, you have intellectual property rights in the creative content you make, such as reviews you write. Or you may have the right to share someone else’s creative content if they’ve given you their permission.
We need your permission if your intellectual property rights restrict our use of your content. You provide Google with that permission through this license.
What’s covered
This license covers
your content
if that content is protected by intellectual property rights.
What’s not covered
- This license doesn’t affect your privacy rights ? it’s only about your intellectual property rights
- This license doesn’t cover these types of content:
- publicly-available factual information that you provide, such as corrections to the address of a local business. That information doesn’t require a license because it’s considered common knowledge that everyone’s free to use.
- feedback that you offer, such as suggestions to improve our services. Feedback is covered in the
Service-related communications
section below.
Scope
This license is:
- worldwide, which means it’s valid anywhere in the world
- non-exclusive, which means you can license your content to others
- royalty-free, which means there are no monetary fees for this license
Rights
This license allows Google to:
- host, reproduce, distribute, communicate, and use your content ? for example, to save your content on our systems and make it accessible from anywhere you go
- publish, publicly perform, or publicly display your content, if you’ve made it visible to others
- modify and create derivative works based on your content, such as reformatting or translating it
- sublicense these rights to:
- other users to allow the services to work as designed, such as enabling you to share photos with people you choose
- our contractors who’ve signed agreements with us that are consistent with these terms, only for the limited purposes described in the
Purpose
section below
Purpose
This license is for the limited purpose of:
- operating and improving the services
, which means allowing the services to work as designed and creating new features and functionalities. This includes using automated systems and algorithms to analyze your content:
- for spam, malware, and illegal content
- to recognize patterns in data, such as determining when to suggest a new album in Google Photos to keep related photos together
- to customize our services for you, such as providing recommendations and personalized search results, content, and ads (which you can change or turn off in
Ads Settings
)
This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.
- using content you’ve shared publicly to promote the services
. For example, to promote a Google app, we might quote a review you wrote. Or to promote Google Play, we might show a screenshot of the app you offer in the Play Store.
Duration
This license lasts for as long as your content is protected by intellectual property rights.
If you remove from our services any content that’s covered by this license, then our systems will stop making that content publicly available in a reasonable amount of time. There are two exceptions:
- If you already shared your content with others before removing it. For example, if you shared a photo with a friend who then made a copy of it, or shared it again, then that photo may continue to appear in your friend’s Google Account even after you remove it from your Google Account.
- If you make your content available through other companies’ services, it’s possible that search engines, including Google Search, will continue to find and display your content as part of their search results.