“The European Union’s data privacy regulators contradicted Google Inc. views on IP addresses and said they should be regarded as personal information, according to reports…”
Brussels — Google Inc. attacked European parliamentarians and privacy advocates on Monday for trying to have competition authorities consider the handling of personal information in its $3.1 billion takeover of rival DoubleClick.
“The argument was the centerpiece of a European Parliament hearing to consider the burgeoning role of the Internet in impinging on the privacy of citizens.”
The sole federal trade commission member who voted against approving Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick and a leading privacy advocate are among the witnesses slated to testify today at a European Union hearing about the privacy implications of the pending merger.
The head of the EU group, Peter Scharr, reported on the extent that privacy policies of search engines need to comply with EU privacy law, according to Associated Press. IP addresses, a string of numbers that identify computers on the Internet, should generally be regarded as personal information by search engines including Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc.
During his speech at the European Parliament hearing on online data protection, Scharr said that when someone is identified by an IP, or Internet protocol, address “then it has to be regarded as personal data.”
Mountain View-based Google disagrees with the report, insisting an IP address only identifies the location of a computer, and not the individual user may be.
Scharr went on to say that IP addresses for a computer may not always be personal or linked to an individual. He acknowledges that computers in Internet cafes or offices are used by several people, making it hard to retrieve personal data from the user.
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said he plans to emphasize to the European Parliament committee on civil liberties, justice and home affairs that U.S. legislators are concerned about the privacy implications of the deal.
“We want people to understand that the FTC decision was really a surprise to a lot of people,” Rotenberg said. “There was statement after statement after statement from Congress to the FTC that they had to do something about privacy.”
In a 4-1 vote, The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) signed off last month on Google’s $3.1 billion deal without any restrictions, which combines its dominance in pay-per-click Internet advertising with DoubleClick’s market-leading position in display ads.
“But the European authorities are still reviewing the proposed $3.1 billion buyout. The deal will not go through if it is not approved in Europe, despite the FTC clearance.”
Last November, Senators Herb Kohl, chairman of the antitrust subcommittee, and Orrin Hatch, the high-ranking Republican on the committee, told the FTC they worried that the merger carries “profound and potentially far-reaching” implications for the Internet ad market, and “raises fundamental consumer privacy concerns.” In addition, 12 Republican Congress members last November called for a hearing into whether Google’s proposed $3.1 billion buyout of DoubleClick would compromise Web users’ privacy.
After listening to a visiting FTC commissioner, U.S. and European privacy advocates and European parliamentarians question the impact of the deal on European citizens’ on-line privacy, Google’s global privacy counsel shot back.
“People are trying to take a privacy case and shoehorn it into a competition law review … I can understand that people continue to peddle this theory in Europe after having lost in the United States,” Peter Fleischer said. His attack did little to calm the waters.
“The reason you want to have the data is because it gives you a competitive advantage. It is business. I do not think they can be completely disconnected. And we should discuss that side of things too,” said Sophie in’t Veld, the Dutch parliamentarian who sought the hearing.
She called information a competitive factor and declared: “Having that much information is market power.”
Federal Trade Commissioner Pamela Harbour said her four colleagues at the FTC had taken a traditional approach and excluded questions of privacy in their decision.
Harbour previously expressed wariness about the merger’s privacy ramifications in her dissent. “The truth is, we really do not know what Google/DoubleClick can or will do with its trove of information about consumers’ Internet habits. The merger creates a firm with vast knowledge of consumer preferences, subject to very little accountability,” she wrote. But Jones also wrote that she thought privacy concerns should be addressed on an industry-wide basis.
“I believe a traditional approach does not capture the interests of all the parties. There is no proxy for the consumer whose privacy is at stake,” she said.
Representatives from Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft as the industry groups Interactive Advertising Bureau in Europe and Network Advertising Initiative also are expected to testify or submit statements.
Privacy advocates worry that Google will combine its information about users’ search queries with DoubleClick data about which Web sites users visit to create highly detailed consumer profiles.
“Google takes the issue of privacy very seriously,” Google’s privacy counsel Peter Fleischer said via a spokesman. “Online privacy is an issue which affects the entire online industry as well as users so it is important that we all contribute to a dialogue on good industry practices so that we can develop a common framework of self-regulation across the world.”
“Google says it uses stored search queries and online activity history to improve search results and give advertisers correct billing information.”
The hearing where Scharr spoke before the European Parliament focused on online privacy and was triggered by the ongoing review by EU authorities of possible antitrust implications in Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick.
Rotenberg said he also plans to call the European authorities attention to FTC chair Deborah Platt Majoras’ refusal to recuse herself from the matter even though her husband is a partner at a law firm representing DoubleClick.
Majoras last year decided that her husband’s involvement with the firm, Jones Day, did not require her to step aside from the case because he changed his status to non-equity partner in 2006, meaning that he no longer shares in the firm’s profits. Majoras also said Jones Day has not appeared before the FTC in the matter.
The European Commission has said it will not take privacy into consideration. In the past six years, it has not turned down any all-U.S. deal approved by U.S. authorities.
Fleischer, asked about the deal rationale, said Google wanted to get into banner advertising. He said his firm did not build dossiers on individuals through searches, instead using the words of each search to decide what ads to display with it.
Contractual limits would prevent Google from using DoubleClick information from individuals, he said.
Stavros Lambrinidis of Greece, who chaired the meeting, asked whether Google turned information over to government authorities.
Fleisher said that if authorities go “through a valid legal process we will respond to it.”