• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, May 29, 2007

It seems that regulators are increasingly concerned with Google, both in the United States and abroad. The latest news is that the Federal Trade Commission has decided to investigate Google's planned $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, according to The New York Times. In Europe, meanwhile, Google's on the defensive for keeping data about users' search histories.

The FTC probe comes as a host of companies and advocacy groups, including Microsoft, AT&T, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy, are calling for government review of the DoubleClick buyout. The corporations are concerned that the deal might violate antitrust rules by giving Google too much market power, while the privacy and consumer advocates groups fear that Google's information about users' search queries, combined with DoubleClick's cookie-based data about Web-surfing activity, potentially gives the company too much data about individual Web users.

While the FTC investigation was characterized by the Times as an antitrust probe, the paper noted that the FTC also focuses on privacy issues -- which also have dogged Google.

In fact, privacy issues, which also have riled European regulators, might prove to be far more of a concern in the long-run than antitrust problems. In a complaint filed last month with the FTC, privacy groups argue that Google's planned buyout of DoubleClick will give it "access to more information about the Internet activities of consumers than any other company in the world."

"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 complaint states.

The privacy groups also target Google's practice of storing users' search histories, arguing that Google has no legitimate reason to retain a record of people's search history for as long as it does. Google recently said it intended to start destroying records linking search queries with IP addresses after 18-24 months -- though it's not clear why Google needs to keep data for even that long.

While the U.S. government appears to endorse Google's data retention plans -- the Department of Justice has proposed that Web companies should keep data for at least two years for crime-fighting purposes -- European regulators are balking. Last week, a group that advises the EU on privacy policy specifically asked Google to defend its decision to retain consumer data, according to press reports.