According to a French agency called National Commission for Computing and Civil Liberties (or CNIL), a preliminary evaluation of the changes which Internet search giant Google is making to its privacy policy has revealed that the changes fall short in terms of their compliance with the data-protection standards in Europe.

In the wake of the findings based on the preliminary analysis, CNIL wrote a letter to the Google CEO Larry Page, urging the company to postpone its planned March 1 implementation of the changes till a full review has been carried out by the agency.

In the letter, posted on CNIL's website, the agency's chairwoman Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin said that European data-protection authorities were "deeply concerned about the combination of personal data across services", as proposed by Google. The letter further said that the authorities were also quite doubtful about "the lawfulness and fairness" of such a privacy policy, as well as its adherence to the European rules.

However, Google has refused CNIL's request for a delay in the implementation of the privacy changes, with the company's global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer saying in a reply to the letter that a pause in the proceedings at this juncture would cause "a great deal of confusion for users" who have already been notified.

Fleischer further added that Google had given its users "well over a month" to read as well as understand the privacy policy changes; and had thus provided "extensive information" about the changes.