The new system comes into force on Thursday and will pool personal data from more than 60 Google services into a single file for each of its hundreds of millions of users.

The move has been criticised by privacy campaigners and was described as “troubling for a number of reasons” by a group of state Attorneys General last week, who accused Google of invading consumer privacy. The firm has meanwhile argued it is “making things simpler and we’re trying to be upfront about it.” The Telegraph