Google's DoubleClick Acquisition Causes Privacy Groups To Complain to FTC

April 21, 2007

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Center for Digital Democracy, and US Privacy Information Research Group, have combined forces to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission objecting to aspects of Google's takeover of online advertisiing agency DoubleClick.

The complaint seems to infer that because both Google and DoubleClick have proven themselves quite efficient in gathering information about tens of millions of U.S. consumers, the combination of Google and DoubleClick will be injurious to online privacy.

Specific practices the group fears involve- but are not limited to, Google's habit of tracking all searches performed using its site and then storing all of the search terms together with the IP address of each computer performing a search. DoubleClick's contribution to the privacy group's concerns involve tracking individual Internet users who receive ads served through the company's ad servers, and then assigning each user a unique number which is recorded in a cookie file on the user's computer.

Google and DoubleClick deny any privacy-invading intent in these practices.

"The acquisition of DoubleClick will permit Google to track both a person’s Internet searches and a person’s web site visits. This could impact the privacy interests of 233 million Internet users in North America, 314 million Internet users in Europe, and more than 1.1 billion Internet users around the world," the privacy groups state in their official complaint.