Google defends data policy after EU warning
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Google will tell Brussels it needs to hold on to users' search data for up to two years for security and commercial reasons after being warned it could be violating European privacy laws by doing so.
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With the EU crafting new laws governing how data collectors such as Google protect users' personal data, lawmakers there are clashing with US business leaders over how far that protection can and should extend.
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Google will tell Brussels it needs to  hold on to users&#39; search data for up to two years for security  and commercial reasons after being warned it could be violating  European privacy laws by doing so.
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By CONSTANT BRAND  LUXEMBOURG - A European Union official on Wednesday applauded Google Inc.'s offer to cut by a quarter the time it retains data on its users' searches.
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Google is proposing that governments and technology companies create a transnational privacy policy.
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'Basic rights need to be guaranteed' in the third pillar The EU's data protection watchdog has warned that European officials are in danger of eroding basic data protection principles and has called on them to reconsider their actions.â¦
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European consumer groups warned the European Commission Thursday that&#160;Google&#39;s plan to take over the online advertising company DoubleClick, currently&#160;under investigation, would&#160;erode consumers&#39; privacy&#160;and would push up prices for online goods and services.In a letter to competition commissioner Neelie Kroes, BEUC, the pan-European Union consumer group, together with three national associations, urged the Commission to use its powers to block the deal in its current form.&quot;Consumers&#39; privacy could be at risk; it is crucial that the Commission integrates privacy concerns into the&#160;Google/DoubleClick merger&#160;review process,&quot; said Monique Goyens, BEUC&#39;s director general in a statement.In addition to privacy concerns, the letter also argued that combined strength of the two Internet firms would harm consumers &quot;with respect to the price, degree of innovation, quality, and selection of online products and services that would likely be available to consumers following the merger.&quot;Neither Google nor the Commission were available to comment.Meanwhile, also on Thursday, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission&#160;cleared Google&#39;s acquisition of DoubleClick&#160;on a 4-1 vote after an eight-month investigation. The FTC concluded that acquisition &quot;is unlikely to substantially lessen competition&quot; and downplayed concerns brought by some privacy groups, saying those concerns are &quot;not unique to Google and DoubleClick,&quot; and &quot;extend to the entire online advertising marketplace.&quot;The Commission&#39;s competition department has until April 2 to decide to permit the deal, approve it on the condition it is changed or prohibit it outright.Competition reviews normally focus on the economic impact of mergers and takeovers, rather than their potential impact on privacy.Consumer groups wrote to Kroes in June, shortly after the planned deal was announced, warning about its impact on privacy. Thursday&#39;s follow-up letter focused on the economic effects of the deal on consumers, as well as reiterating the groups&#39; concerns about privacy.Acknowledging that privacy falls beyond the scope of merger reviews, they nevertheless tried to persuade the Commission to bear it in mind.&quot;Privacy issues raised in our 27 June letter are detrimental to consumers&#39; welfare and ought to be taken into account in the merger review process,&quot; the consumer groups said.Economic harm to consumers would result from the deal because it would strengthen what the groups describe as the super-dominant position of Google in the online advertising industry.&quot;The online advertising market will be placed in jeopardy if the Google/DoubleClick merger is allowed to proceed, because the combined company will dominate both major &#39;pipelines&#39; for online advertising - both the pipeline for search ads and the pipeline for non-search ads,&quot; they wrote to Kroes.&quot;If allowed to proceed, the transaction will enable the world&#39;s largest network for the sale of non-search online advertising (Google) to capture and use to its own benefit the dominant provider of stand-alone ad-serving tools (DoubleClick) used by web publishers to connect other networks to the non-search inventory which they need to survive and which is not already committed to Google,&quot; the letter said.By eliminating competition between the two companies for both stand-alone ad serving tools and integrated ad networks, the deal will ultimately &quot;reinforce Google&#39;s super-dominant position in the market for search ads,&quot; they said.In addition to the possibility of higher prices for consumers, the deal could undermine the common business model for online publishing, which relies on advertising revenue. This could force content providers to switch to a model based around revenue from subscriptions, forcing consumers to pay for what they get free now.&quot;Higher online advertising prices may result in part of the advertising budgets shifting to other media, resulting in less revenue than initially forecasted for web publishers. Such publishers might then be forced to charge users to access content in circumstances where they do not do so today,&quot; the consumer groups warned.&#160;
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A European consumer group has complained that Google Inc.'s proposed acquisition of online ad broker DoubleClick Inc. could hurt privacy rights due to the massive amount of data the companies would hold.
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By CONSTANT BRAND  BRUSSELS, Belgium - An independent European Union panel is investigating whether Google Inc.'s Internet search engine abides by European privacy rules, which tend to be stricter than those in the United States.
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Google defends itself during a European Parliament hearing to consider the Internet's effect on privacy.
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A proposal before the German government to require ISPs and e-mail service providers to collect and retain a significant amount of customer data has drawn Google's ire. The company says it may shut down the German version of its Gmail service if the law goes through.
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Google Inc, the world&#39;s largest  Internet company, will propose at a meeting of international  policymakers in France on Friday that national regulators agree  on a basic set of global privacy protections.
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Google has been warned that it may be violating European Union privacy laws by storing search data from its users for up to two years.
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Directive does not apply to search engines Google is not bound by the Data Retention Directive when it comes to search engine logs, Europe's data protection committee has said. Google has used the Directive to justify keeping data, but OUT-LAW has learned that the law does not apply.â¦
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Google Inc. is confident that its $3.1 billion bid for online ad tracker DoubleClick will win over European and U.S. regulators, a company executive said Friday Â even as advertisers expressed concerns the deal will shrink competition.
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A European Union probe triggered by concerns over how long Google stores user information has widened to include all Internet search engines.
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The European Union investigates whether saving search data violates privacy laws.