Google has announced that it is protecting the privacy of educational users who depend on Google (News - Alert) Apps by not collecting usage data on them for advertising.

“Today more than 30 million students, teachers and administrators globally rely on Google Apps for Education. Earning and keeping their trust drives our business forward. We know that trust is earned through protecting their privacy and providing the best security measures,” Bram Bout director of Google for Education, said in an official company blog post.

“This is why, from day one, we turned off ads by default in Apps for Education services. Last year, we removed ads from Google Search for signed-in K-12 users altogether. So, if you’re a student logging in to your Apps for Education account at school or at home, when you navigate to Google.com, you will not see ads.”

Google has turned off the ability to deliver ads in the Apps for Education Administrator console. It’s also turned off scanning in Google Apps for Education, meaning that it cannot collect data for delivering its ads. Users won’t even see ads if they use navigate to Google’s main page.

While Google is dependent on ads for revenue, it has attracted criticism from a number of privacy advocates for delivering targeted ads in its search engine and applications like Gmail.

While in theory the users can take the ads or leave them, minors might not understand the full ramifications of these ad-based services. Google’s disabling of these ads in educational apps might deflect criticism that the company is targeting vulnerable young users.

Bout said that the search giant would roll out similar changes in its apps for business, government and legacy users of the free versions of its apps. He also reiterated Google’s commitment to privacy and security, touting Google’s use of HTTPS in Gmail.