Google's acquisition of DoubleClick spurs privacy fears

GOOGLE'S PENDING acquisition of its online advert serving competitor DoubleClick has prompted concerns among public interest privacy groups.

Google called for development of a global privacy standard last Friday, referring to a framework designed by the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation council (APEC).

Not mollified by that move, apparently, and concerned that Google collects "massive" amounts of data about users, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) and the Center for Digital Democracy all released statements Monday calling for the US government to block or impose conditions on Google's acquisition of DoubleClick.

In a press conference, EPIC termed the APEC standard weak. Melissa Ngo of EPIC said it "puts the burden on consumers to prove they are being harmed."

PIRG, on the other hand, expressed multiple concerns about the increasing demand for consumers' private information, impacts on consumer choice, and potential for advertising vendor control. "The resulting Google company will have a lot of control over what we can actually see, read and hear about online," Amina Fazlullah of PIRG told PC World. "That is definitely problematic for consumers, but also for greater democratic concerns."

Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy echoed PIRG's concerns. "There is no greater threat to competition in the online market and also a threat to privacy than the Google/DoubleClick merger," he said. He also said that the combination of Google's domination of online search with DoubleClick's major presence in display advertising "will give Google an overwhelming share of control of the online advertising market."

A Google spokesman said that the APEC framework is just one model and that Google also supports the US Federal Trade Commission's efforts to establish standards in the evolving market for online advertising.

In a statement, Google said "Google aggressively protects user privacy, and user trust is central to Google's values and essential to the success of our products."

It went on to say that EPIC's complaints are "unsupported by the facts and the law." Google further said "We have engaged with numerous privacy and consumer advocates to discuss and explain our acquisition of DoubleClick, but unfortunately EPIC has refused every offer we have made to meet with them. We can only conclude that EPIC would prefer not to be informed about the erroneous claims it is making."

As long as Google continues to accept money for advertising from anyone who's not disseminating illegal content, we just don't see any terrible looming threat to democracy, frankly.

As for Google collecting data about users' searches, there are ways to search Google anonymously, if you're really concerned about that sort of thing.

However, were Google to start returning different search results to different users based upon location or the contents of their Gmail inboxes, or any other criteria, well... µ