Co-constitutive complexityUnpacking Google’s privacy policy and terms of service post-GDPR

Abstract Google is the gateway to the Internet for billions of people. However, to use Google’s multiple platforms and services, users must accept Google’s terms. With the advent of the EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), Google made significant changes to these terms. In this article, we scrutinise the intertextual relations between Google’s privacy policies and terms of service (ToS) and the GDPR – and the discursive co-constitutive complexity within and between these frameworks. We argue that the material and communicative articulation of Google’s privacy policies and ToS should be understood as deliberative data politics delimiting users’ agency, consent, and privacy. Furthermore, we emphasise complexity and the demands of reducing complexity as two opposing dynamics. While the GDPR required Google to make its terms and policies clearer and more understandable, ironically, in the process of accommodating GDPR’s demand of increased transparency, the discursive complexity of Google’s policies has in fact increased.