Commentary

Just An Online Minute... European Group Adds To Google Privacy Concerns

A leading consumer group in Europe has added its voice to the growing chorus of concern that the pending Google-DoubleClick merger will erode consumers' privacy.

Cornelia Kutterer, senior legal adviser to the BEUC (European Consumers' Organisation), told the Associated Press the group feared that Google and DoubleClick would mesh information about users to create detailed portraits of users.

"They have so far complementary databases with private data," Kutterer told the Associated Press. "If they can combine them, this could lead to a violation of user privacy rights."

U.S. privacy advocates have expressed similar fears. In a complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission, groups including the Electronic Information Privacy Center and Center for Digital Democracy said they, too, worry about the type of detailed information about consumers that Google will be able to amass. "At this time, there is simply no consumer privacy issue more pressing for the Commission to consider than Google's plan to combine the search histories and web site visit records of Internet users," the groups argued.

Whether these concerns will derail the deal -- or at least force Google to publicly disavow any intention to create detailed consumer profiles -- isn't clear. The FTC is probing the companies, but the agency hasn't yet tipped its hand. European regulators, however, have recently indicated concern about Google and privacy in another context -- the search giant's practice of collecting and storing user IP addresses along with their queries. And, while Google has been relatively quiet about its plans for integrating DoubleClick databases, the company took the European authorities' concern about user searches seriously enough that it said it would slash the time it held onto such data to 18 months, down from 24.

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