Europe calls for Google to be more transparent about data
collection
By Craig Timberg, Published: October 15 | Updated:
Tuesday, October 16, 6:45 AM
Google’s efforts to track users across services such as
YouTube and Gmail do not meet European standards of privacy, officials
announced Tuesday, in the latest of a growing number of regulatory challenges
for the American technology giant.
A letter signed by regulators from 27 countries calls on
Google to give users more notice about how their data are collected and seek
consent in some cases. The company merged the privacy policies of 60 of its
services this year, making it easier to track the behavior of its users but
sparking concerns that it was amassing too much personal information.
European regulators did not explicitly call Google’s
policy illegal but identified a range of shortcomings that they said could
undermine user privacy and confidence in the company. The regulators made
numerous recommendations that would allow Google to improve compliance. “As
data protection regulators, we expect that Google takes the necessary steps to
improve information and clarify the combination of data, and more generally
ensure compliance with data protection laws and principles,” the letter said.
Google did not immediately announce any changes.
“We have received the report and are reviewing it now.
Our new privacy policy demonstrates our long-standing commitment to protecting
our users’ information and creating great products,” Peter Fleischer, the
company’s global privacy counsel, said in a statement Tuesday. “We are
confident that our privacy notices respect European law.”
Tuesday’s action comes as regulators in the United States
and Europe prepare for the possibility of major antitrust cases against the
company. Competitors such as Apple, meanwhile, are pressing claims of patent
violations against several makers of devices that run Google’s Android
operating system.
Taken together, the proliferating legal issues amount to
a threat to the growth of one of the world’s most successful companies, which
this month passed Microsoft as the second-most highly valued technology
company, behind only Apple. Google stock is up 30 percent since July but has
faltered in recent days.
“It’s never had this much government scrutiny coming at
them at the same time,” said Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of the Web site
Search Engine Land, which covers the search engine business. “They are big, and
many people do worry about things that are getting bigger and seemingly
unstoppable.”
Regulators worldwide have sharpened scrutiny of Google as
the company has moved beyond its core search business and into electronic
commerce, telecommunications, social media, online videos and more. A growing
number of aggrieved competitors have complained to government officials, much
as rivals to Microsoft did in the 1990s, setting up what proved to be an epic
showdown between the U.S. government and the company.
That case, and a similar one in Europe, centered on
allegations that Microsoft used the dominance of its operating system to
benefit other products, such as its Internet Explorer browser. The antitrust
allegations against Google carry an echo of that case; rivals accuse the
company of using its dominance of the search market to help its moves into
electronic commerce, travel and other businesses.
“They’re trying to build a moat around the castle and put
alligators in the moat,” said Gary L. Reback, a Silicon Valley lawyer who
represented a key Microsoft competitor in the 1990s and represents Google
rivals now.
Google officials declined to comment Monday on the
privacy case in Europe or the antitrust investigations. But company officials
havemade clear their desire to avoid costly, distracting legal fights such as
the ones waged by Microsoft.
“Twenty years ago, a large technology firm was setting
the world on fire,” Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said in Senate
testimony last year. “Its software was on nearly every computer. Its name was
synonymous with innovation. But that company lost sight of what mattered. Then
Washington stepped in.
“In the years since, many of us in Silicon Valley have
absorbed the lessons of that era.”
Privacy concerns have followed Google and other Internet
companies for years, especially as they have moved into Europe, where laws are
stricter. Google’s Street View program, in which cars equipped with cameras
took pictures of street-level scenes, has provoked outrage in Germany and some
other countries. The controversy was made worse when investigations revealed
that the cars also collected personal information from unsecured WiFi signals;
the company said that was done in error and apologized.
Google said changes to its privacy policy merely
simplified and unified rules across its array of products, such as Gmail,
YouTube and the Chrome browser. But consumer watchdogs complained that it
allowed users to be tracked whenever they signed in to a Google service.
The company says that such tracking allows it to serve
more relevant ads; a visitor to golfing sites, for example, might see ads for
balls, clubs or golfing-themed resorts. Privacy advocates, however, have warned
about the volume and precision of data Google is compiling on people worldwide.
European regulators, led by the French data protection
authority, opened an investigation in February. The letter released Tuesday,
the details of which were first reported by the Reuters news service, offers
several potential remedies that could bring the privacy policy in compliance.
The case is unlikely to have an immediate effect on users
beyond Europe, though regulators elsewhere could ask Google to make similar
changes. U.S. lawmakers have expressed concern about the company’s policy.
Resolving antitrust issues will probably be more
difficult. Google has been negotiating with the European Union’s chief
antitrust official, Joaquin Almunia, for months.
He has detailed four possible areas of violations, with
the most serious being allegations that Google organizes its search results in
a way that highlights its own offerings and penalizes those of rivals.
Staffers at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, meanwhile,
have circulated a draft recommendation of a possible lawsuit against Google
over alleged antitrust violations. The letter includes evidence such as
internal company e-mails, said a person familiar with the investigation who
spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The FTC has declined comment on the case.
Several people familiar with the thinking of
commissioners say a majority of the commission, including Chairman Jon
Leibowitz, has significant concerns about Google’s behavior. A decision is
expected before the end of the year, though few observers expect action ahead
of the presidential election.
The antitrust investigation already is generating
political attention. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), who has a background in the
technology industry, sent a letter to Leibowitz last week discouraging the FTC
from suing Google, on the grounds that the marketplace remains open to
competitors.
“This is a dynamic marketplace, one in which competition
exists every day,” Polis said in an interview Monday. “Today’s leader can be
tomorrow’s also-ran.”
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