Google's famed motto, "do no evil", is increasingly being questioned by organisations in Europe and North America that say the search giant poses a growing threat to privacy and needs anti-trust scrutiny. Karlin Lillingtonreports.
At the heart of concerns - and the subject of formal complaints to the European Commission and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the US - is Google's proposed acquisition of the dominant internet advertising firm, DoubleClick.
The acquisition has ignited long-standing worries among privacy advocates and civil-rights groups that personal information, now kept separate in databases owned by independent companies, will be increasingly merged into vast, searchable repositories.
"Never before has one single company had the market and technological power to collect and exploit so much information about what a user does on the internet," Jim Murray, the Irish-born director of the European consumers' organisation, Beuc, wrote in a formal letter to the European Commission on behalf of the organisation this summer.
"Through its acquisition of DoubleClick, Google could monopolise the online advertising business, thereby restricting competition and raising privacy concerns over control of consumer data," the letter argues.
Following Beuc's letter and other complaints, the European Commission is considering the implications of the acquisition.
The FTC is also looking at the deal and will hold hearings in November. The US Senate has indicated that it will hold its own hearing next month, while a House of Representatives subcommittee on consumer issues is also examining the deal.
Concerns have been raised separately in the US by the leading privacy advocate organisation, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (Epic), and in Canada by the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (Cippic).
It's a formidable line-up, and the general signals are clear - several online search and advertising companies including Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! have already begun to revise the length of time they retain individuals' information or place cookies on their computers.
When the $3.1 billion (€2.28 billion)deal between Google and DoubleClick was announced last April, David Drummond, senior vice-president of corporate development at Google, said he was confident that anti-trust regulators would approve it.
Google has argued that it will protect information carefully. It believes that merging consumers' personal internet data - as it already does when you use its search, maps and YouTube websites - enables it to offer a more personalised service (meaning highly targeted advertising).
The stakes are huge. The overall web advertising market is increasingly lucrative. From a sluggish start, it has exploded in recent years, expanding from $12.5 billion in 2005 to an estimated $23.8 billion in 2009, according to analyst eMarketer.
Google's foes say that Google would control the majority of that advertising market if the merger goes ahead. DoubleClick currently reaches an estimated 80 per cent of the US market with its advertising. Google conducts 85 per cent of all internet searches. Many fear advertisers will not bother to take their advertising money anywhere except Google-DoubleClick.
Immediately following the announcement of the proposed acquisition, many companies voiced concerns. Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith, for example, indicated that the company would like regulators to scrutinise the deal for its privacy and possible anti-trust implications. Microsoft also recently hired anti-Google lobbyists to fight the acquisition in Washington DC.
The argument privacy advocates make is that, if citizens' private movements in the real world were so carefully watched and stored - if you were scanned by CCTV as you strolled up Grafton Street, if every item you examined in every shop were recorded, if your purchases were noted, and if all this information was merged - there would be a mass outcry.
With Google and other internet services now available over mobile handsets that can gather location data (down to a few yards on 3G handsets), the CCTV isn't even necessary.
For two years, Google has already been tracking the details of how individuals use its search service. The European Commission has already opposed the retention of such data on EU citizens for any longer than two years and Google has revised its policies accordingly. Further refinements are expected.
"The Google-DoubleClick merger will create an unprecedented record of our online lives - the combined dominance of Google and DoubleClick means that one company may have a record of every search you make and every page you visit," says TJ McIntyre, UCD law lecturer and chairman of privacy rights group Digital Rights Ireland.
Because of the two companies' omnipresence on the web, "it will be difficult, if not impossible, to avoid this monitoring", he says. He also fears that the huge database that would result would be open to abuse by third parties. "In Ireland, for example, there is no effective legal control over police access to information of this type," he says.
"Gardaí could request details of an individual's entire online life - every page they visit, every search they make, even every e-mail they send or receive via Google's Gmail service - without any requirement for a warrant or other court supervision."
At a Glance
• Announcement last April, of the proposed $3.1 billion deal which would merge the world's dominant search company with the world's dominant internet advertisement placement company
• The merger prompted a rapid net advertising industry consolidation - Microsoft bought aQuantive, and Yahoo bought Right Media
• Google competitors as well as privacy advocates have complained to US and European regulators about the deal, citing antitrust and privacy concerns
• Google controls around 85 per cent of the online search market, while Doubleclick reaches 80 per cent of the US online market
• The online advertising market will be worth an estimated $23.8 billion by 2009
