CALIFORNIA, USA — GOOGLE is focusing on the importance of protecting personal information in an unusual marketing campaign for a company that has been blasted for its own online privacy lapses and practices.

The educational ads will start appearing yesterday in dozens of US newspapers, including The New York Times, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal, and magazines, including Time and the New Yorker. Google Inc also will splash its message across billboards within the subways of New York and Washington, as well as various websites.

Google will address some of the basics of online privacy and security in the “Good To Know” ads, which will all include referrals to a website for additional information.

Initial topics to be covered include the steps that can be taken to protect online account passwords and the use of computer coding to locate and identify Web surfers. Google will also try to explain why its widely used search engine can produce more helpful results if it knows more about the past interests of the person making the request.

While Google views the campaign as a public service, it may come across as disingenuous to critics who say the Internet search leader compiles too much personal information about its users and then isn’t careful enough about protecting the sensitive data.

In a major gaffe, Google exposed the personal contacts of its email users in 2010 when it launched a new social service called Buzz. That breakdown led to a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission requiring the company to submit to external audits of its privacy policies every other year.

Google’s commitment to privacy was called into question again in 2010 when it acknowledged that company-dispatched cars taking photos of streets around the world also had been vacuuming up personal emails and website activity occurring over unsecured wireless networks set up in homes and small businesses.