Government not us biggest privacy threat says Google

Stan Beer
Thursday, 10 August 2006 19:50

Your IT - Home IT

In the wake of the AOL search privacy fiasco, search kingpin Google claims that government interference is a far greater threat to search users' privacy than accidental disclosures of user data.

AOL has suffered severe embarrassment and could pay further consequences for accidentally releasing the search queries of 658,000 customers, all of which could be identified by ID numbers.

However, Google CEO Eric Schmidt claimed at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose that the company had the necessary protection in place to prevent similar incidents from occurring with its search data. However, attempts by governments to get access to user information such as search and surfing habits posed a more serious threat according to Schmidt.

Google collects and stores search data on users so that it can target advertising more closely to their surfing habits and search requests. Some analysts believe that the search company should purge user data on a regular basis.

However, Google has so far resisted this because the more intelligence it has on users the more closely it can target its advertising and thus increase its value. Google insists that it has the necessary safeguards in place to prevent AOL type accidents occurring.