Stop

your snooping, European regulators tell Google

Privacy watchdogs have united in an unprecedented attack on the way the search giant
collects information on its users
Nikhil Kumar
Wednesday, 3 April 2013
That Google likes to keep things simple is

apparent from its spartan home page: a logo, a

text box for search queries, two buttons to
process queries, and an unobtrusive strip of links
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to the internet behemoths email, maps and
other services along the top. Links along the

bottom connect you to the company, and up in
the top right-hand corner theres a button to sign

in to your Google account.
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which found shortcomings in the search engine

giants privacy regime. Last year, in a letter to

Larry Page, Googles co-founder and chief
executive, and signed by CNIL and its European
40 counterparts, the regulators said: Google
empowers itself to collect vast amounts of

personal data about internet users, but Google
has not demonstrated that this collection was

proportionate to the purposes for which they
are processed. Moreover, Google did not set
It was in this minimalist spirit that Google decided 46 any limits to the combination of data nor
to overhaul its privacy policies last year. In a post
provide clear and comprehensive tools

on the companys official blog in January last year
allowing its users to control it.
its head of privacy, Alma Whitten, explained that
despite trimming out policies in 2010, we still
What is the risk for the search engine, which
have more than 70 (yes, you read right 70)
has been working with regulators to resolve
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privacy documents covering all of our different
the concerns over the last year? Financially, it
products. This approach is somewhat
hardly merits a mention. While the joint

announcement was billed as a showdown,
complicated.
the eventual fine, if indeed there is a fine,
So Google said it was rolling out a new main 55 would barely make a difference to the
policy that covers the majority of our
company, whose revenues hit $50bn last year.
products.What does this mean in practice? In
CNIL, for example, has the right to impose a
short, well treat you as a single user across all
fine of up to 300,000 or what Google earns

our products, which will mean a simpler, more
in a few minutes. Any penalties, then, are
intuitive Google experience, Ms Whitten wrote.
unlikely to force Google cut back on the free
60 lunches it offers its employees.
Theres that word simple again. But this week,
regulators from no fewer than six European
More damaging for the business, which
countries (Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Spain
maintains that its privacy policy respects
and the Netherlands) said they werent sure that
European law and allows us to create simpler,
the policy was simple enough. (Ms Whitten,
more effective services, would be the
incidentally, stepped down from her post just 65 negative publicity, and the possible concerns it
ahead of the European announcement, in what
creates in users minds. Only last month, the

has been described, simply, as an unrelated
company agreed to cough up $7m to settle a
move.)
multi-state US investigation into the

interception of private information as its
The unprecedented joint action came after an
Google Maps vehicles drove around gathering
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investigation led by the French watchdog CNIL,
images for its Street View service. The

company blamed a rogue engineer, and did not

admit any wrongdoing in the matter.

Worries, meanwhile, are also growing about the

possible privacy implications of another Google
product, one that hasnt even been released yet.

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In grand Google tradition, the Google Glass is a

simple gadget: a hands-free device shaped like a
pair of spectacles. A visor in the wearers line of
sight displays the interface. Earlier this year,
Googles co-founder Sergey Brin was spotted on
the New York subway wearing a prototype. The
device will respond to voice commands, and
comes equipped with a camera, meaning that
you can be sitting in a coffee shop in downtown
Mountain View, near the search engines
headquarters, say, wearing a Google Glass,
looking as if youre doing nothing more than
sipping a skinny cappuccino when you are, in fact,
videoing your surroundings. Or so it seems after
viewing the snippets of information that the
company has released about the project.

Rivals, meanwhile, are swinging into action as the

headlines add up, with Microsoft running an ad

campaign based on the privacy worries
surrounding Google. The adverts, which began
96 airing before the European announcement, are
accompanied by a website (www.scroogled.com)

which is meant to lure users to Microsofts
Outlook email service by highlighting what the
100 campaign says are problems with the way Google
treats the privacy of GMail users. It highlights the

concerns and not-so-subtly asks: Have you been
Scroogled?