Germany — In an attempt to defuse discord, Mountain View, Calif.-based search engine behemoth Google Inc. and the Hamburg privacy regulator signed a pact last weekend to limit an internet technology that collects and utilizes user information for its Analytics websites traffic monitoring tool in Europe, Bloomberg reports.
The application, Google Analytics, is a free service that tracks the addresses of the computers used to visit websites. In addition, unifying the data over days or months arms Google with a crystal clear scenario about who is interested in which subjects online.
However, website owners in Germany who employs Google Analytics will have to delete their accounts and open new ones in order to comply with data protection rules, regulators said in a statement.
Although Google disagrees with regulators who say its free Analytics tool violates data-protection rules, the company said in a blog post, but ultimately the company has reached an agreement with the regional data protection authority in Hamburg, where it has its German head office, to make certain changes.
In fact, Hamburg state’s commissioner for data protection, Johannes Caspar, representing privacy officials countrywide, gave Google Analytics a clean certification after Google urged third parties running websites in Germany to allow users to opt out of being tracked.
Google has agreed to expand a browser add-on that will allow users to opt-out of website data collection, allowing website owners to request that the search giant does not store their complete IP addresses within Europe. The Mountain View, California-based search engine giant also agreed to enter into data-administration contracts with website owners as provided by German law, Caspar said.
“We are at the end of a long but positive discussion process,” said Casper. “I explicitly welcome that Google has said it will implement the changes Europe-wide.”
The dispute has dragged on for years. The issue was first evoked by German state privacy regulators in 2009, voicing concerns over how Google collected information via its Analytics tool, and asked regulator Caspar to negotiate with Google on their behalf.
However, the deal appears to balance website owners’ needs to collect advertising data with German concerns that data about individual people and their private tastes and opinions might be collected, but, the process is unlikely to go down well with thousands of sites that rely on Google Analytics to track and understand their visitors over time — although the guidance is currently only for sites based in the state of Hamburg.
Besides, the regulator’s new instructions for websites that employs the tool says they will have to delete past records because they have not been collected the data in accordance with the rules. The only way to do this, it says, is to close their accounts and open new ones — losing all historical data in the process. Google says the technical changes will apply throughout Europe.
Moving further, website owners are advised to accept the agreement, configure Google Analytics to shorten IP addresses, publish a privacy policy stating how they use the tool and reopen their account to delete historical data. The process does not require deleting accounts for other Google services such as Gmail or Google Docs, but it will require website operators to make small changes to their sites’ html code, in order for the new account to identify and analyze them.
But Hamburg’s data protection commissioner Caspar emphasized that it is eventually website operators–not Google itself–who are responsible for ensuring their practices are in line with the law. And under Germany’s strict data protection rules misuse of personal information can lead to fines of up to €50,000.
In a blog post last weekend, Google’s head of data protection in Germany, Per Meyerdierks, said the company had collaborated closely with the authorities and was pleased to be able to offer users more clarity. “The protection of the user’s private space was one of the principles behind the development of Google Analytics from the beginning. It is important to us to provide users of Google Analytics with transparency and control,” he said.
Nevertheless, Caspar added that further discussions between the authorities and Google will continue as web technologies continue to evolve, particularly in the area of mobile.