An all-but-final loss of the Gmail trademark case in Germany and a newly-passed law on retaining personal information on its users has Google’s email service reeling.
Google threatens to pull the plug on Gmail if Germany passes a proposed law requiring stringent data retention.
Frankfurt — Google has threatened to close its German online services Google Mail if the German government does not scrap its controversial draft law that would monitor telecommunications and internet traffic, Peter Fleischer, the company’s global privacy counsel, said in an interview with WirtschaftsWoche magazine.
The company has faced a couple of recent setbacks with Gmail in Germany. A long-running trademark battle between Google and Daniel Giersch ended in victory for the German venture capitalist. CNET said a German appeals court ruled against Google.
Google had to rename Gmail to Googlemail in the United Kingdom to satisfy trademark claims there.
More bad news from Germany came in the form of new legislation. Google Blogoscoped said a newly passed law on record-keeping has Google making noises about pulling Gmail out of the country.
Legislation drafted by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Justice is being considered by the German Parliament. It would require ISPs and email providers to collect and store information on users’ mailing and internet habits and to do so in such a way as to identify individual web users.
The law is Germany’s interpretation of EU data-retention rules. If passed later this year by German parliament — by no means a sure bet — it would require all telecommunications companies to collect and keep private information on their German customers starting in 2008.
To help with criminal surveillance the government wants the connection data of any German citizen — including Internet details, phone call information, and text messages — saved for 6 months. Anonymous data would be unacceptable. The vote in the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, has not yet been scheduled.
Fleischer said the German Justice Ministry wants to make it an obligation not only for internet providers but also for those which offer email services to provide customers data in such a way that users could be identified.
Such a plan is a “severe intrusion into privacy” and is against Google’s basic principle to offer anonymous email accounts, he said.
Google, though, offers anonymous e-mail accounts. It takes first and last names for its Gmail service, but those can be faked; and it does not require a valid snail-mail address.
“Many users around the globe make use of this anonymity to defend themselves from spam, or government repression of free speech,” said Fleischer, to the German business magazine Wirtschaftswoche.
“If need be we will simply switch off Google Mail in Germany. If the web community can no longer trust us to handle their data with care, then we would be quickly thrown out of the window,” he said.
Google itself has not been a consistent champion of private data, however. In mid-June a British human-rights group called Privacy International published security rankings of major Internet companies including Amazon, Apple, BBC, Ebay, Microsoft, Myspace, Skype, Wikipedia, and Yahoo. Google turned up at the bottom.
In May, Google offered to comply with European Union privacy rules by cutting the length of time it keeps personal data on its users’ searches by 25 percent. Google said it would anonymize that information after 18 months, instead of 24.
Privacy International praised Google for not handing over “piles of data to the US government,” but had filed a complaint with privacy regulators in 2004 over Google’s policy of scanning customers’ E-mail to sell semi-personalized advertising.
Google faces the prospect of having Germany challenge them to pull Gmail out of the country. How successful that gambit will be depends on how much Google values its prospects in Germany. If they feel success in China or Korea is within reach, Google could opt to focus on those markets and write off Germany as a loss.
Fleischer added that the law would be useless anyway, since users would just switch to email accounts run overseas.
The move puts Google on the side of user confidentiality, something that will please privacy groups who have slammed the web giant for its retention of user data.