The company will sign a formal undertaking produced by the ICO as a result of its gathering of personal information from Wi-Fi networks when collecting data for its Street View service.
The ICO initially dropped its investigation into the affair, saying that it was unlikely that Google had gathered much personal data when its camera-mounted cars scanned Wi-Fi networks.
It later emerged that the company had gathered entire emails, usernames and passwords by mistake. The ICO then decided not to punish Google with a fine of up to £500,000 but to offer it the chance to sign the undertaking.
"The ICO will conduct a full audit of Google’s internal privacy structure, privacy training programs and its system of privacy reviews for new products," said an ICO statement. "The audit will take place within nine months of the undertaking being signed."
It said that Google senior vice president Alan Eustace had signed the undertaking. The ICO statement said that it "commits the company to putting into place improved training measures on security awareness and data protection issues for all employees. The company has also said it will require its engineers to maintain a privacy design document for every new project before it is launched. The payload data that Google inadvertently collected in the UK will also be deleted".
“I am very pleased to have a firm commitment from Google to work with my office to improve its handling of personal information," said Information Commissioner Christopher Graham. "We don’t want another breach like the collection of payload data by Google Street View vehicles to occur again."
“It is a significant achievement to have an undertaking from a major multinational corporation like Google Inc. that extends to its global policies and not just its UK activities," he said. "We will be keeping a close watch on the progress Google makes and will follow up with an extensive audit."
The additional details of what the information collected by Google actually contained was revealed by Canadian Privacy Commissioner Jenifer Stoddart, who has also been active in making Facebook change the way it handles privacy.