Google's director of privacy Alma Whitten is stepping down.
(Credit:
Google)
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It's not uncommon for Google to be accused of violating user privacy. So, anyone in the seat of defending the Web giant's privacy policies has a hard job.
According to Forbes, Google's current privacy director Alma Whitten is stepping down in June after three years on the job. She will be replaced by Google engineering director Lawrence You, who will take the title, "director of privacy for product and engineering."
Whitten worked as a Google engineer for seven years and had a background in privacy and security when she was named privacy director for the company in 2010. She was the first person to fill this position at Google after the company got caught up in a handful of privacy debacles that included Street View cars collecting user e-mails, passwords, and URLs.
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Whitten has been operating out of Google's London office, but You will be based at the Mountain View, Calif., headquarters. You has been at Google for eight years and was one of the founding members of the company's privacy program, a Google spokesperson told CNET. You will report to Eric Grosse -- the vice president of security and privacy engineering.
"During her 10 years at Google, Alma has done so much to improve our products and protect our users," the Google spokesperson told CNET in a statement. "The privacy and security teams, and everyone else at Google, will continue this hard work to ensure that our users' data is kept safe and secure."
