Blog Entry

Internet users are abuzz over Google's new Street View feature, which displays ground-level photos of places that in some cases even look through the windows of homes. If that feels like Big Brother, consider the private information that Google collects on its users every day through the search terms they enter on its site. Privacy International, a London-based group, has just given Google its lowest grade, below Yahoo and Microsoft, for "comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy."
There are welcome signs that this era of online privacy invasion could be coming to an end. Data protection chiefs from the 27 countries of the European Union sent Google a letter recently questioning the company's policy for retaining consumer information. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission(FTC) is looking into the antitrust ramifications of Google's $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, an online advertising company.
Google has announced that rather than keeping information indefinitely, it would only keep it for 18 months before making it anonymous. That is a good step, but not enough, since it's not clear what anonymous means.
Google is the focus of privacy advocates right now, but it is hardly the only concern. Competitors like Yahoo and Microsoft have the same set of incentives. Privacy is too important to leave up to the companies that benefit financially from collecting our personal data. The FTC should require all Inernet companies the need to establish clear rules on the collection and storage of personal information.

Excerpt from (newspaper article: International Herald Tribune)