Google No Longer Has a Chief Privacy Officer. Should You Follow Suit?

On June 4, Reuters reported that Google’s chief privacy officer is departing after 13 years at the company. Google does not intend to replace him because instead, it is reorganizing the privacy function by placing privacy professionals in specific product teams. 

“How companies are protecting and managing data is far more important today, particularly as AI advances. We are seeing a major shift in how organizations are thinking about digital governance at large,” says Caitlin Fennessy, vice president and chief knowledge officer at the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP).

“Privacy leaders within organizations, privacy professionals, and privacy teams are taking on more and more aspects of digital governance, and if you're watching this field broadly, you're probably seeing their titles shift.” 

Specifically, chief privacy officers are becoming chief privacy and AI governance officers, chief privacy and cybersecurity officers, and chief privacy and AI ethics officers. And, over the past 24 months, organizational leaders have been tapping privacy leaders and their teams to pick up AI governance and build AI governance programs. 

“We did interview-based research with a slate of leading organizations about how they are structuring digital governance, and a lot of them right now are taking a step back and trying to think about how they restructure,” says Fennessy. “I’m calling it ‘digital governance’ for lack of a better term, but their internal governance structures.” 

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