• The Telegraph, Thursday, May 19, 2011 11:49 AM

Where does Google draw the line on personal privacy? Apparently, building a massive database capable of recognizing individual faces. Even though such a project is increasingly possible, Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman, said the search giant won't go down that road. Speaking at Google's Big Tent conference on Internet privacy, Schmidt said that the rapid development of facial recognition technology has been one of the things that has surprised him most in a long career as a computer scientist, The Telegraph reports.

"Such 'surprising accuracy' was, however, he said, 'very concerning.'" As such, Schmidt said it's "unlikely" that Google will a database utilizing facial recognition advances. That said, Schmidt suggested that "some company ... is going to cross that line."

More broadly, while privacy has never been Google's top priority, the company has recently sought to help consumers keep tabs on their information. Its Dashboard service, for instance, permits users to see and delete all the information Google holds on them.

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