Google Terms of Service

Effective 22 May 2024 | Archived versions | Download PDF

Country version: Germany

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, to use our services, you must accept these terms. We encourage you to download these terms for future reference. We make these terms, and all previous versions, available at all times here.

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

In the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland, Google services are provided by:

Google Ireland Limited
incorporated and operating under the laws of Ireland
(Registration number: 368047/VAT number: IE6388047V)

Gordon House, Barrow Street
Dublin 4
Ireland

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 who has accepted these terms, and you allow your child to use the services, then to the extent permitted by applicable law, 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 Ireland Limited 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

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

While we use a broad definition of 'services' throughout these terms as described above, applicable law draws distinctions between 'digital content', 'services' and 'goods' in certain situations. That’s why we use the more specific terms in this section and the Legal guarantee section.

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 the continual evolution of our digital content, services and goods, we make modifications such as adding or removing features and functionalities, increasing or decreasing usage limits and offering new digital content or services or discontinuing old ones. We may also change our digital content or services for these other reasons:

• to adapt to new technologies
• to reflect increases or decreases in the number of people who use a particular service
• to respond to key changes in the licences and partnerships that we have with others
• to prevent abuse or harm
• to address legal, regulatory, safety or security issues

In particular, we sometimes make legally-required updates, which are modifications that keep digital content, services or goods in conformity with the law. We make these updates to our digital content, services and goods for safety or security reasons and to make sure that they meet the quality standards that you expect, such as those described in the Legal guarantee section. We may automatically install updates that address significant safety or security risks. For other updates, you can choose whether you want them installed.

We maintain a rigorous product research programme, so before we change or stop offering a service, we carefully consider the reasonableness of the change or deprecation, 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.

If a modification negatively affects your ability to access or use our digital content or services, or if we stop offering a service all together, we’ll provide you with reasonable advance notice by email – including a description of the changes, when they’ll take place and your right to end your contract with us if our modifications create more than a minor negative impact – except in urgent situations such as preventing abuse or harm, 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

You can view, copy and store these terms in PDF format. You can accept these terms and any service-specific additional terms when you’re signed in to your Google Account.

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

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:

• 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)
• using AI-generated content from our services to develop machine learning models or related AI technology
• 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.

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

Service-related communications

To provide you with our services, we sometimes send you service announcements and other service-related 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.

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. If you’re a consumer, then you enjoy all legal rights granted to consumers under applicable law, as well as any additional rights provided under these terms or service-specific additional terms.

Legal guarantee

If you’re an EEA-based consumer and you’ve agreed to our Terms of Service, then EEA consumer laws provide you with a legal guarantee covering the digital content, services or goods that we provide you. Under this guarantee, we’re liable for any lack of conformity that you discover:

• within two years of the delivery of goods (such as a phone) or the one-time supply of digital content or services (such as purchasing a movie)
• at any time during the 'continuous' supply of digital content or services (such as Maps or Gmail)

Your national laws may provide an even longer guarantee. Your rights under these legal guarantees aren’t limited by any other commercial guarantees that we provide. If you want to make a guarantee claim, please contact us.

Liabilities

For all users

These terms don't limit liability for:

• fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation
• death or personal injury caused by negligence
• gross negligence
• willful misconduct

For property damage or financial loss caused by Google, its representatives or its agents due to slight negligence, Google is only liable for breaches of essential contractual obligations that result in typical damage foreseeable at the conclusion of the contract. An essential contractual obligation is an obligation that must be complied with as a prerequisite for the performance of the contract, and that the parties may trust will be fulfilled. This does not change the burden of proof to your detriment.

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.

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 there are objective and concrete reasons to 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 there are objective and concrete reasons to 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
• there are objective and concrete reasons to 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’re an EEA-based consumer, you can also withdraw from these terms within 14 days of accepting them. If you do stop using a service, we’d appreciate knowing why so that we can continue improving our services.

Handling requests for your data

Respect for the privacy and security of your data underpins our approach to responding to data disclosure requests. When we receive data disclosure requests, our team reviews them to make sure that they satisfy legal requirements and Google's data disclosure policies. Google Ireland Limited accesses and discloses data, including communications, in accordance with the laws of Ireland and EU law applicable in Ireland. For more information about the data disclosure requests that Google receives worldwide, and how we respond to such requests, see our Transparency Report and Privacy Policy.

Settling disputes, governing law and courts

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

If you’re a resident of, or an organisation based in the European Economic Area (EEA) or Switzerland, these terms and your relationship with Google under these terms and service-specific additional terms, are governed by the laws of your country of residence, and you can file legal disputes in your local courts. If you’re an EEA-based consumer, please contact us to resolve issues directly. The European Commission also offers an Online Dispute Resolution platform, but Google isn’t legally required to use this or other alternative dispute resolution platforms.

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.

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.

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 change these terms or service-specific additional terms, we'll provide you with at least 15 days' advance notice before the changes take effect. When we notify you of changes, we'll provide you with the new version of the terms and point out the material changes. If you don't object before the changes take effect, you'll be deemed to have accepted the changed terms. Our notice will explain this objection process. You can refuse to accept the changes, in which case the changes won't apply to you, but we reserve the right to end our relationship with you if all other termination requirements are met. You can also end your relationship with us at any time by closing your Google Account.