GOOGL E TERM S OF SERVICE

Effective 22 May 2024 | Archived versions

What’s covered in these terms

We know it’s tempting to skip these Terms of

Service, but it’s important to establish what you
can expect from us as you use Google services,
and what we expect from you.
These Terms of Service reflect the way that Google’s business works, the laws that apply
to our company, and certain things that we’ve always believed to be true. As a result,
these Terms of Service help define Google’s relationship with you as you interact with our
services. For example, these terms include the following topic headings:

What you can expect from us, which describes how we provide and develop our
services

What we expect from you, which establishes certain rules for using our services

Content in Google services, which describes the intellectual property rights to the
content that you find in our services – whether that content belongs to you, Google
or others

In case of problems or disagreements, which describes other legal rights that you
have, and what to expect in case someone violates these terms.

Understanding these terms is important because, by using our services, you’re agreeing
to these terms.

Besides these terms, we also publish a Privacy Policy. Although it’s not part of these
terms, we encourage you to read it to better understand how you can update, manage,
export and delete your information.
Terms

Service provider
Google services are provided by, and you’re contracting with:

Google LLC
organised under the laws of the State of Delaware, USA, and operating under the laws of
the USA

1600 Amphitheatre Parkway

Mountain View, California 94043
USA

Age requirements
If you’re under the age required to manage your own Google Account, you must have
your parent or legal guardian’s permission to use a Google Account. Please ask your
parent or legal guardian to read these terms with you.

If you’re a parent or legal guardian, and you allow your child to use the services, then
these terms apply to you and you’re responsible for your child’s activity on the services.

Some Google services have additional age requirements as described in their service-
specific additional terms and policies.

Your relationship with Google

These terms help define the relationship between you and Google. When we speak of
'Google', 'we', 'us' and 'our', we mean Google LLC and its affiliates. Broadly speaking, we
give you permission to access and use our services if you agree to follow these terms,
which reflect how Google's business works and how we earn money.

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 and Pixel)

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 or preloaded 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.
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 that we give you to access and use our services continues as long as you
comply with:

these terms

service-specific additional terms, which could, for example, include things like
additional age requirements

We also make various policies, help centres 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 Centre, Safety Centre, Transparency
Centre, and other pages accessible from our policies site. Finally, we may provide specific
instructions and warnings within our services – such as dialogue boxes that alert you to
important information.

Although we give you permission to use our services, we retain any intellectual property
rights that we have in the services.

Respect others
We want to maintain a respectful environment for everyone, which means that 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

Our service-specific additional terms and policies, such as our Generative AI Prohibited
Use Policy, 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.

Don't abuse our services

Most people who access or use our services understand the general rules that keep the
Internet safe and open. Unfortunately, a small number of people don't respect those rules,
so we're describing them here to protect our services and users from abuse. In that spirit:

You must not abuse, harm, interfere with or disrupt our services or systems – for
example, by:

introducing malware

spamming, hacking or bypassing our systems or protective measures

jailbreaking, adversarial prompting or prompt injection, except as part of our safety

and bug testing programs

accessing or using our services or content in fraudulent or deceptive ways, such as:

phishing

creating fake accounts or content, including fake reviews

misleading others into thinking that generative AI content was created by a

human

providing services that appear to originate from you (or someone else) when
they actually originate from us

providing services that appear to originate from us when they do not

using our services (including the content that they provide) to violate anyone's legal
rights, such as intellectual property or privacy rights
 reverse engineering our services or underlying technology, such as our machine
learning models, to extract trade secrets or other proprietary information, except as
allowed by applicable law

using automated means to access content from any of our services in violation of
the machine-readable instructions on our web pages (for example, robots.txt files
that disallow crawling, training or other activities)

hiding or misrepresenting who you are in order to violate these terms

providing services that encourage others to violate these terms

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 that you have the necessary rights to do so and that the
content is lawful.

Licence
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
that you make, such as reviews that 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 licence.

What's covered
This licence covers your content if that content is protected by
intellectual property rights.

What’s not covered

This licence doesn’t affect your privacy rights – it’s only about
your intellectual property rights

This licence 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 licence 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 licence is:

worldwide, which means that it’s valid anywhere in the world

non-exclusive, which means that you can licence your content

to others

royalty-free, which means that there are no monetary fees for

this licence

Rights

This licence 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 that 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 that
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 licence 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 analyse your content:

for spam, malware and illegal content

to recognise patterns in data, such as determining

when to suggest a new album in Google Photos to keep
related photos together

to customise our services for you, such as providing

recommendations and personalised search results,
content and ads (which you can change or turn off in
Ad Settings)
This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received and when
it is stored.

using content that you’ve shared publicly to promote the

services. For example, to promote a Google app, we might
quote a review that you wrote. Or to promote Google Play, we
 might show a screenshot of the app that you offer in the Play
Store.

developing new technologies and services for Google

consistent with these terms

Duration

This licence 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
licence, 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.

Using Google services

Your Google Account

If you meet these age requirements, you can create a Google Account for your
convenience. Some services require that you have a Google Account in order to work – for
example, to use Gmail, you need a Google Account so that you have a place to send and
receive your email.

You’re responsible for what you do with your Google Account, including taking
reasonable steps to keep your Google Account secure, and we encourage you to regularly
use the Security Check-Up.

Using Google services on behalf of an organisation or

business
Many organisations, such as businesses, non-profits and schools, take advantage of our
services. To use our services on behalf of an organisation:

an authorised representative of that organisation must agree to these terms

your organisation’s administrator may assign a Google Account to you. That

administrator might require you to follow additional rules and may be able to access
or disable your Google Account.

Service-related communications
To provide you with our services, we sometimes send you service announcements and
other information. To learn more about how we communicate with you, see Google’s
Privacy Policy.

If you choose to give us feedback, such as suggestions to improve our services, we may
act on your feedback without obligation to you.
Content in Google services

Your content
Some of our services allow you to generate original content. Google won't claim
ownership over that content.

Some of our services give you the opportunity to make your content publicly available –
for example, you might post a product or restaurant review that you wrote, or you might
upload a blog post that you created.

See the Permission to use your content section for more about your rights in your
content, and how your content is used in our services

See the Removing your content section to learn why and how we might remove user-
generated content from our services

If you think that someone is infringing your intellectual property rights, you can send us
notice of the infringement and we’ll take appropriate action. For example, we suspend or
close the Google Accounts of repeat copyright infringers as described in our Copyright
Help Centre.

Google content
Some of our services include content that belongs to Google – for example, many of the
visual illustrations that you see in Google Maps. You may use Google’s content as allowed
by these terms and any service-specific additional terms, but we retain any intellectual
property rights that we have in our content. Don’t remove, obscure or alter any of our
branding, logos or legal notices. If you want to use our branding or logos, please see the
Google Brand Permissions page.

Other content
Finally, some of our services give you access to content that belongs to other people or
organisations – for example, a store owner’s description of their own business, or a
newspaper article displayed in Google News. You may not use this content without that
person or organisation’s permission, or as otherwise allowed by law. The views expressed
in the content of other people or organisations are their own, and don’t necessarily reflect
Google’s views.

Software in Google services

Some of our services include downloadable or preloaded software. We give you
permission to use that software as part of the services.

The licence that we give you is:

worldwide, which means that it’s valid anywhere in the world

non-exclusive, which means that we can licence the software to others

royalty-free, which means that there are no monetary fees for this licence

personal, which means that it doesn’t extend to anyone else

non-assignable, which means that you’re not allowed to assign the licence to
anyone else

Some of our services include software that’s offered under open-source licence terms that
we make available to you. Sometimes there are provisions in the open-source licence that
explicitly override parts of these terms, so please make sure that you read those licences.

You may not copy, modify, distribute, sell or lease any part of our services or software.
In case of problems or disagreements
Both the law and these terms give you the right to (1) a certain quality of service and (2)
ways to fix problems if things go wrong.

Warranty
We provide our services using reasonable skill and care. If we don’t meet the quality level
described in this warranty, you agree to tell us and we’ll work with you to try to resolve the
issue.

Disclaimers
The only commitments that we make about our services (including the content in the
services, the specific functions of our services or their reliability, availability or ability to
meet your needs) are provided in (1) the Warranty section; (2) the service-specific
additional terms and (3) laws that can’t be limited by these terms.

Don't rely on the services for medical, legal, financial or other professional advice. Any
content regarding those topics is provided for informational purposes only and is not a
substitute for advice from a qualified professional.

Liabilities

For all users

Both the law and these terms try to strike a balance as to what you or Google can claim
from the other in case of problems. That's why the law requires everyone to be
responsible for certain liabilities – but not others – under these terms.
These terms only limit our responsibilities as allowed by applicable law. These terms don't
limit liability for:

fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation

death or personal injury caused by negligence

gross negligence

willful misconduct

Other than the liabilities described above, Google is liable only for its breaches of these
terms or applicable service-specific additional terms, subject to applicable law.

For business users and organisations only

If you’re a business user or organisation:

To the extent allowed by applicable law, you'll indemnify Google and its directors,
officers, employees and contractors for any third-party legal proceedings (including
actions by government authorities) arising out of, or relating to, your unlawful use of
the services or violation of these terms or service-specific additional terms. This
indemnity covers any liability or expense arising from claims, losses, damages,
judgments, fines, litigation costs and legal fees, except to the extent a liability or
expense is caused by Google's breach, negligence or willful misconduct.

If you’re legally exempt from certain responsibilities, including indemnification, then

those responsibilities don’t apply to you under these terms. For example, the United
Nations enjoys certain immunities from legal obligations and these terms don’t
override those immunities.

Google won’t be responsible for the following liabilities:

loss of profits, revenues, business opportunities, goodwill or anticipated

savings

indirect or consequential loss

punitive damages

Except as stated in the For all users section above, Google's total liability arising out
of or relating to these terms is limited to the greater of (1) US $500 or (2) 125% of the
fees that you paid to use the relevant services in the 12 months before the breach.
Taking action in case of problems
Before taking action as described below, we'll provide you with advance notice when
reasonably possible, describe the reason for our action and give you an opportunity to
clarify the issue and address it, unless we reasonably believe that doing so would:

cause harm or liability to a user, third party or Google

violate the law or a legal enforcement authority’s order

compromise an investigation

compromise the operation, integrity or security of our services

Removing your content

If we reasonably believe that any of your content (1) breaches these terms, service-
specific additional terms or policies, (2) violates applicable law, or (3) could harm our
users, third parties or Google, then we reserve the right to take down some or all of that
content in accordance with applicable law. Examples include child pornography, content
that facilitates human trafficking or harassment, terrorist content and content that
infringes someone else’s intellectual property rights.

Suspending or terminating your access to Google services

Without limiting any of our other rights, Google may suspend or terminate your access to
the services or delete your Google Account if any of these things happen:

you materially or repeatedly breach these terms, service-specific additional terms or

policies

we’re required to do so to comply with a legal requirement or a court order

we reasonably believe that your conduct causes harm or liability to a user, third
party or Google – for example, by hacking, phishing, harassing, spamming,
misleading others or scraping content that doesn’t belong to you
For more information about why we disable accounts and what happens when we do,
see this Help Centre page. If you believe that your Google Account has been suspended or
terminated in error, you can appeal.

Of course, you’re always free to stop using our services at any time. If you do stop using a
service, we’d appreciate knowing why so that we can continue improving our services.

Settling disputes, governing law and courts

For information about how to contact Google, please visit our contact page.

Californian law will govern all disputes arising out of or relating to these terms, service-
specific additional terms or any related services, regardless of conflict of laws rules.
These disputes will be resolved exclusively in the federal or state courts of Santa Clara
County, California, USA, and you and Google consent to personal jurisdiction in those
courts.

To the extent that applicable local law prevents certain disputes from being resolved in a
California court, then you can file those disputes in your local courts. Likewise, if
applicable local law prevents your local court from applying California law to resolve
these disputes, then these disputes will be governed by the applicable local laws of your
country, region or other place of residence.

About these terms

By law, you have certain rights that can’t be limited by a contract like these Terms of
Service. These terms are in no way intended to restrict those rights.

These terms describe the relationship between you and Google. They don’t create any
legal rights for other people or organisations, even if others benefit from that relationship
under these terms.
We want to make these terms easy to understand, so we’ve used examples from our
services. But not all the services mentioned may be available in your country.

If these terms conflict with the service-specific additional terms, the additional terms will
govern for that service.

If it turns out that a particular term is not valid or enforceable, this will not affect any
other terms.

If you don’t follow these terms or the service-specific additional terms, and we don’t take
action right away, that doesn’t mean we’re giving up any rights that we may have, such as
taking action in the future.

We may update these terms and service-specific additional terms (1) to reflect changes in
our services or how we do business – for example, when we add new services, features,
technologies, pricing or benefits (or remove old ones), (2) for legal, regulatory or security
reasons or (3) to prevent abuse or harm.

If we materially change these terms or service-specific additional terms, we'll provide you
with reasonable advance notice and the opportunity to review the changes, except (1)
when we launch a new service or feature, or (2) in urgent situations, such as preventing
ongoing abuse or responding to legal requirements. If you don't agree to the new terms,
you should remove your content and stop using the services. You can also end your
relationship with us at any time by closing your Google Account.

DEF IN ITION S

affiliate

An entity that belongs to the Google group of companies, which means Google LLC and
its subsidiaries, including the following companies that provide consumer services in the
EU: Google Ireland Limited, Google Commerce Limited and Google Dialer Inc.
business user

An individual or entity who is not a consumer (see consumer).

consumer

An individual who uses Google services for personal, non-commercial purposes outside of
their trade, business, craft or profession. (See business user)

copyright

A legal right that allows the creator of an original work (such as a blog post, photo or
video) to decide if and how that original work may be used by others, subject to certain
limitations and exceptions (such as 'fair use' and 'fair dealing').

disclaimer

A statement that limits someone’s legal responsibilities.

indemnify or indemnity

An individual or organisation’s contractual obligation to compensate the losses suffered

by another individual or organisation from legal proceedings such as lawsuits.

intellectual property rights (IP rights)

Rights over the creations of a person’s mind, such as inventions (patent rights); literary
and artistic works (copyright); designs (design rights), and symbols, names and images
used in commerce (trademarks). IP rights may belong to you, another individual or an
organisation.

liability
Losses from any type of legal claim, whether the claim is based on a contract, tort
(including negligence) or other reason, and whether or not those losses could have been
reasonably anticipated or foreseen.

organisation

A legal entity (such as a corporation, non-profit or school) and not an individual person.

services

The Google services that are subject to these terms are the products and services listed at
https://policies.google.com/terms/service-specific, including:

apps and sites (like Search and Maps)

platforms (like Google Shopping)

integrated services (such as Maps embedded in other companies' apps or sites)

devices and other goods (like Google Nest)

Many of these services also include content that you can stream or interact with.

trademark

Symbols, names and images used in commerce that are capable of distinguishing the
goods or services of one individual or organisation from those of another.

warranty

An assurance that a product or service will perform to a certain standard.

your content
Things that you create, upload, submit, store, send, receive or share using our services,
such as:

Docs, Sheets and Slides that you create

blog posts that you upload through Blogger

reviews that you submit via Maps

videos that you store in Drive

emails that you send and receive through Gmail

pictures that you share with friends via Photos

travel itineraries that you share with Google