Google’s announcement of its $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick has kicked up some privacy issues. The EU is warning Google about its privacy policies and now U.S. consumer advocates are griping that once the search giant gets a hold of the ad giant, it will have far more information about us than is seemly.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center, joined by the Center for Digital Democracy and U.S. Public Interest Research Group, plans to file a complaint with the FTC today alleging that
Google will operate with virtually no legal obligation to ensure the privacy, security and accuracy of the personal data that it collects. 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.
Is it just me, or am I missing something with all these concerns about privacy in the context of the DoubleClick acquisition? So far as I can tell, the big issue is that there will be just too much specific consumer information in the hands of one company, which will, or so the implication goes, use the data for evil, mind-bending, hyper-targeting purposes. Is that a violation of anybody’s “privacy?”
Or is it the case that there aren’t enough safeguards in place in the event somebody wants to get their hands on all this highly specific data?
Cynthia Brumfield at 11:58 AM|Comments(0)
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