• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, July 5, 2013

European regulators really aren't happy with Google's decision last year to change its privacy policy.

Today, the U.K. Information Commissioner's Office told the search company that its 2012 privacy policy doesn't give consumers enough information about how Google will draw on data about users.

“Google must now amend their privacy policy to make it more informative for individual service users,” the regulators said in a statement. They added that Google must do so by Sept. 20, or risk an enforcement action.

Earlier this year, the French agency CNIL criticized Google for failing to adequately respond to complaints about its new policy.

The officials are reacting to a decision Google made last year, when it changed its privacy policy to allow it to combine information about signed-in users across a variety of platforms and services -- including Gmail, Android, and YouTube. People can't opt out of the aggregation. But they can get around Google's data compilation by accessing sites without signing in, or use different browsers for different services.

Google has always said that it wants to use the data in order to target people more precisely. The company also points out that it isn't collecting any new data about users, only drawing on it in new ways.

In the U.S., Google's move did not result in any regulatory challenges, but a group of consumers filed a class-action on behalf of all U.S. Web users who created Google accounts between August of 2004 and March of 2012, when Google changed its privacy policy. Late last year, a federal judge dismissed the case, ruling that even though the users “raised serious questions regarding Google’s respect for consumers’ privacy," they nonetheless couldn't proceed unless they could allege some sort of injury. That dismissal was without prejudice, meaning that the users were able to try again.

In March, they filed a new complaint, which Google promptly moved to dismiss. The judge is currently considering whether to allow the case to move forward.