Watchdog group pans Google's privacy policies as worst on the Web

[DeepModem Mom]

LAT/AP: Watchdog group pans Google's privacy policies as worst on the Web
From the Associated Press
June 9, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google Inc.'s privacy practices are the worst among the Internet's top destinations, according to a watchdog group seeking to intensify the recent focus on how the online search leader handles personal information about its users.

In a report released today, London-based Privacy International assigned Google its lowest possible grade. The category is reserved for companies with "comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy."

None of the 22 other surveyed companies -- a group that included Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and AOL -- sunk to that level, according to Privacy International.

While a number of other Internet companies have troubling policies, none comes as close to Google to "achieving status as an endemic threat to privacy," Privacy International said in an explanation of its findings.

In a statement from one of its lawyers, Google said it aggressively protects its users' privacy and stands behind its track record. In its most conspicuous defense of user privacy, Google last year successfully fought a U.S. Justice Department subpoena demanding to review millions of search requests....

***

Privacy International is particularly troubled by Google's ability to match data gathered by its search engine with information collected from other services such as e-mail, instant messaging and maps....

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-ex-google9jun09,0,1001453.story?coll=la-home-business

[lvx35]

1. Google is a threat freedom of expression as well.

Some prometheus has got to bring down that blazing fast search technology to the level of the individual website, because right now the supposedly decentralized web is very centralized in the area of searches, and that gives google the power to make sites disappear to many, many people. I've seen it done.

And the privacy stuff is interesting too. Its probably true that Google can't create stuff that's as cool without all that info, but you reach a point where you realize that having robots do everything for you is the coolest of all, and that's when the terminators start getting constructed...;)

[Rosemary2205]

2. I miss googlebombs. :) nt

[BlooInBloo]

3. Um, their BUSINESS is data-mining - essentially the opposite of privacy.