Google Terms of Service
If you are in Germany and access products or services from Google that target Germany, please go to our terms of use for Germany.
Last changed on: April 30, 2014 (view archived versions)
Welcome to Google!
Thank you for using our products and services (“Services”).
The services are made available to you by Google Inc. (“Google”), Amphitheater Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA.
By using our services, you agree to these terms of use.
Please read them carefully.
We offer a variety of different services.
For this reason, additional conditions or product requirements (e.g. a minimum age) may apply.
Such additional terms will be made available in connection with the relevant services and will become part of your agreement with us as soon as you use those services.
Use of our services
You are required to adhere to the guidelines that apply to our services.
Do not use our services in an abusive manner.
For example, you are not authorized to intervene in the services or to access the services in any other way than via the user interface provided by Google and in accordance with our specifications.
You may only use our services to the extent permitted by law.
This also includes the legal provisions on export and re-export controls.
We may suspend or stop providing our services to you if you breach our terms of use or guidelines, or if we are investigating suspected misconduct.
By using our services, you do not acquire any industrial property rights in our services or in the content that you access.
You may not use content from our services unless you have the consent of the rights holder or are otherwise authorized to use this.
These terms of use do not grant you any right to use any trademarks, brand elements or logos used in our services.
Legal notices that are displayed in or in connection with our services may not be removed, made illegible or changed.
Our services also display content that does not come from Google.
This content is the sole responsibility of the person making it available.
We reserve the right to check content for illegality or violation of guidelines.
We can remove content or refuse to display it if we can reasonably assume that it violates our guidelines or applicable law.
This does not necessarily mean that we are reviewing content.
Therefore, do not assume that we do this in principle.
In connection with your use of our services, we may send you service announcements, administrative messages and other information.
You can unsubscribe from some of these communications.
Some of our services are available on mobile devices.
Do not use these services in any way that distracts you or prevents you from complying with any traffic or safety regulations.
Your google account
You need a Google account to use some of our services.
You can create your own Google account.
A Google Account can also be created for you and assigned to you by an administrator, such as your employer or school.
If so, different or additional terms may apply and your administrator may be able to access or disable your account.
Keep your password confidential to protect your Google account.
You are responsible for the activities that take place in or through your Google Account.
Do not reuse your Google Account password on third-party applications.
If you notice unauthorized use of your password or your account, follow these instructions.
Data protection and protection of copyrights
The Google data protection provisions explain how we handle your personal data and protect your data when you use our services.
By using our services, you agree that we may use this data in accordance with our privacy policy.
We respond to reports of suspected copyright infringement and terminate the accounts of those who repeatedly infringe in accordance with the process provided by the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
We provide information to help copyright owners exercise their rights online.
If you believe that your copyrights have been infringed and you want to let us know, you can find information on filing notifications and Google's guidelines for handling notifications on our help pages.
Your content in our services
With some of our services you can upload, post, save, send or receive content.
You retain all existing industrial property rights to the content that you post in our services.
In short: what is yours remains yours.
If you upload or post content in or through our services or store, send or receive content in our services or through our services, you grant Google (and those with whom we work) the right to host this content worldwide, to save, reproduce, modify, create derivative works therefrom (including those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes that we make to make your content work better in our services), communicate, publish, publicly perform to display and distribute publicly.
These rights granted by you under this license are only used to implement, promote and improve our services and to develop new services.
This granting of rights remains in effect even if you no longer use our services, e.g. E.g. a business listing that you have added to Google Maps.
For some services, you can access content you have provided and remove it from the relevant service.
In some of our services, our use of the content you provide is restricted by the terms of use or settings.
Make sure that you have the necessary rights to grant us an appropriate license for all content that you upload to our services.
Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) in order to provide you with product features that are relevant to you, such as personalized search results, personalized advertising and spam and malware detection.
This analysis takes place when the content is sent, received and saved.
If you have a Google Account, we may display your profile name, profile picture, and the actions you take on Google or in third-party applications associated with your Google Account on our Services, in advertisements and in other commercial contexts.
This applies, for example, to pressing +1 buttons, to testimonials that you write and comments that you post.
We respect the settings you make in your Google account to restrict the sharing or visibility of content.
For example, you can prevent your name and profile picture from appearing in ads. ‌‍⁢⁡⁠ ⁣
Further information on how Google uses and stores content can be found in our data protection declaration or in the additional conditions for certain services.
If you send us feedback or suggestions for improvement on our services, we are entitled to use this feedback and these suggestions for improvement without any obligation to you.
About software in our service
If the use of a service requires or includes downloadable software, this software can be automatically updated on your computer as soon as a new version or feature is available.
For some services, you can adjust the settings for automatic updates.
Google grants you the personal, worldwide, free, non-transferable and non-exclusive right to use the software provided by Google as part of the services.
The sole purpose of this granting of usage rights is to enable you to use the services provided by Google in accordance with the terms of use listed here.
You are not authorized to reproduce, modify, distribute, sell or rent any part of our services or the software contained therein.
In addition, you may not reverse engineer this software or attempt to extract its source code.
Exceptions only apply if they are permitted by law or if you have written consent from Google.
Open source software plays an important role for us.
Some of the software used in our services may be subject to an open source license, the terms of which we make available to you.
The open source license may contain provisions that expressly take precedence over some of the provisions of these Terms of Use.
Change and termination of our services
We are constantly changing and optimizing our services.
For example, we can add or remove functions or features and also suspend or permanently discontinue a service.
You can stop using our services at any time, even if we would regret it.
Google can suspend the provision of services to you at any time or limit them by additional or new restrictions.
Your data is yours and we believe it is important that you have access to this data.
Should we discontinue a service, we will, if reasonably possible, inform you appropriately in advance and give you the opportunity to export your data from this service.
Warranty and Disclaimer
We provide our services in an economically reasonable manner and hope that you will enjoy using them.
However, some things are not part of our service offering.
Unless expressly stated in these Terms of Use or in the Additional Terms, neither Google nor Google's suppliers or distributors make specific representations with regard to the Services.
For example, we do not make any promises regarding the content in the services, regarding specific functionalities of the services or their reliability, availability or suitability of the services for your purposes.
We provide the services in their current form.
In some jurisdictions, certain warranties apply, such as the implied warranty of usability, fitness for a particular purpose and freedom from legal defects.
As far as this is legally permissible, we exclude all warranties.
Liability for our services
To the extent permitted by law, Google and its suppliers and sales partners accept no responsibility for lost profits, lost revenue, loss of data, financial loss or indirect, special and exemplary damage, as well as consequential damage and damage with punitive damages.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, Google, its suppliers and resellers, shall have total liability for any claim under these Terms of Use, including any implied warranties, to the amount that you have paid us (or redeployment) to use the Services of the services, if we choose this option).
In no event shall Google or its suppliers and distributors be liable for any loss or damage that is not typically foreseeable.
We recognize that in some countries you may have statutory consumer rights.
If you use the services for private purposes, these terms of use or the additional conditions do not restrict any statutory consumer rights that cannot be contractually excluded.
Use of our services in companies
If you use our services on behalf of a company, that company accepts these terms of use.
The Company will indemnify and hold harmless Google and its affiliates, employees, agents and employees from any legal process or claim arising in connection with your use of the Services or your breach of these Terms of Use, including all claims and costs arising from any lawsuit , Losses, damages, legal proceedings and judgments as well as court and legal fees.
About these terms of use
Google can adapt these terms of use or any additional conditions for a respective service, for example to take into account changes in the legal framework or changes to our services.
You should therefore regularly review these Terms of Use.
We will post notices of changes to these Terms of Use on this page.
We will publish notices of changes to additional conditions within the relevant service.
Changes do not apply retrospectively and will take effect no earlier than 14 days after their publication.
However, changes regarding a new function for a service or changes for legal reasons are effective immediately.
If you do not agree to the changed terms of use of a service, you must stop using this service.
In the event of a conflict between these Terms of Use and additional terms, the additional terms and conditions will take precedence in the individual case.
These terms of use govern the relationship between you and Google.
No claims or rights for third parties are established.
If you do not comply with these Terms of Use and we do not take immediate action against it, this does not mean that we are waiving our rights, such as the right to act in the future.
Should one of the provisions be ineffective, the remaining provisions remain unaffected.
The laws of some countries will not apply the law of the State of California to some types of disputes.
If you are resident in any of these countries, where California law does not apply, the laws of your country will apply to such disputes regarding these Terms of Use.
Otherwise, you acknowledge that all disputes arising out of or in connection with these Terms of Use or Services are subject to the laws of the State of California, except as regulated by private international law.
Your local jurisdiction will also apply if your jurisdiction does not allow you to recognize the jurisdiction or venue of the courts in Santa Clara, California, USA, for any conflict in connection with these Terms of Use.
Otherwise, any claims arising out of or in connection with these Terms of Use or Services will be heard solely in federal or Santa Clara County, California, United States courts, and you and Google agree to the jurisdiction of those courts.
Information on how to contact Google can be found on our contact page.