Google Apps and government requests: enhanced transparency

Posted by Marc Crandall, Senior Manager of Global Compliance, Google Enterprise

More than 4 million businesses and 40 million users trust us with the data they store in Google Apps. We work to be responsible stewards of that data, and transparency is one important aspect of that. Last year, we posted a Transparency Report to provide the Internet community with more insight about how often governments ask for user data. Earlier this week, we published an update to the report. For the first time, we’re not only disclosing the number of requests for user data, but we’re showing the number of users or accounts that are specified in those requests, too.

We would like other cloud providers to join us in the effort to provide more transparency. We hope the Transparency Report will not only be insightful for Google Apps users concerning the number of requests we receive, but also provide customers with information they need to help trust their data with Google Apps.