By Greg Beck
Google won at least partial praise from privacy advocates last month with its
announcement that it plans to purge identifying information from its database of web searches after 18 to 24 months. But recent news again raises
concerns about Google's privacy policies.
First, Google announced that it plans to acquire DoubleClick, Inc., which distributes Internet-based ads and tracks which ads web browsers
click. The merger raises fears that Google could combine its existing
massive databases of its users' search habits with Doubleclick's equally massive database on users' behavior to create a combined database of Web
users and their browsing habits.
Google and DoubleClick claim that they will not merge the data in this
way, but critics are not mollified. The merger prompted three consumer
groups, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, PIRG, and the Center
for Digital Democracy, to file a complaint
with the Federal Trade Commission raising privacy and antitrust
concerns. Although Google's privacy policy discloses that it saves
personally identifying information, the objecting consumer groups argue that Google's
practices are nevertheless deceptive because the disclosure is
difficult to find and because survey data shows that most Google users
don't know that Google stores personally identifiable data along with a
user's search history.
Second, Google has announced a new service to track every website that
web browsers click on from its search results. The service includes one
critical feature that is worthy of praise: it is completely voluntary.
Google's privacy policy, however, doesn't rule out saving this data
even without a user's consent, and, in fact, specifically provides that "Google may present links in a format that enables us to keep track of whether these links have been followed." Google does store information about
which websites users visit in at least some circumstances. Moreover, when a user clicks on a link from Google's search results, the user's browser is sent to Google's own server before being sent to the requested web page, in a way that would allow Google to track which sites users click. Google's
policy raises concerns that it can link data on which websites its users visit with personally identifying information and that,
once again, consumers might not realize the amount of privacy they are
sacrificing whenever they search the web.