(Back after another blogging break…)
Congress plans to give Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of Ask.com the once-over, citing not only competition concerns but also privacy fears given the access the search giant will have to massive user activity databases once the deal goes through. The FTC, which is also responsible for consumer privacy matters, is in charge of the usual merger review for this deal, a sign to some DC observers that policymakers plan to factor in privacy-related issues into the normally dry antitrust analysis applied to these kinds of deals.
While all this scrutiny may seem like a great thing for Google’s foes, things have a way of boomeranging in Washington — if the feds crack down on Google, they may very well expand the scope of their inquiries in a way that bites everybody on the bum. Therefore, it’s not surprising that Google’s rivals, Microsoft and Ask.com, are taking proactive steps to ensure that they’re not caught in this net.
The two companies announced yesterday a joint commitment “to call on the industry to develop global privacy principles for data collection, use and protection related to searching and online advertising.” The move comes on the heels of Google’s own efforts to ward off privacy-related punishment. The search giant earlier this year announced that it will anonymize search results after 18 months (meaning you can’t peg them back to specific individuals) and, more recently, said that it will allow cookies of inactive users to expire after two years.
In keeping with this new plan to promote greater privacy protections (and in the process perhaps also protect its $6 billion deal to buy online ad giant AQuantive Inc. from the kind of harsh scrutiny that Google is enduring), Microsoft is also anonymizing search results after 18 months, but is doing Google one better — the search records on Microsoft’s Live Search service will go anonymous after 18 months unless Microsoft hears otherwise from users and the identity wiping is retroactive.
Ask.com is likewise stepping up its pro-privacy measures. The company announced last week a new tool called AskEraser, which will allow users to stop Ask from storing any personal information about their searches.
All of this is good news for consumer privacy. But, Google, Microsoft and Ask are clearly hoping to gain some kind of upper hand in the policy arena and as opposed to gaining an advantage in marketplace through these moves. Although governmental bodies (including the EU) will no doubt be pleased by the proactive measures, do consumers even know or care about which search service stores what kind of information about them? Probably not.
Cynthia Brumfield at 8:52 AM|Comments(0)
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