The company made the claim in a submission to the
Senate's investigation of its proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of
online advertising giant DoubleClick. The Senate is probing the
deal over widely-held fears that it would create an online
advertising monopoly, and that the huge amount of information held
by the combined company could lead to privacy breaches.
Google's Chief Legal Officer David Drummond made a written
submission to the Senate outlining some of the action the company
proposed to take to alleviate privacy fears.
One proposal, according to Reuters news agency, was for a
'crumbled cookie', which would be a way of storing personal
information separately without identifying it all as coming from
one person or machine.
"We have consulted with numerous privacy, consumer and industry
groups in developing these ideas and have endeavoured to be
responsive to their concerns," he wrote in his submission,
according to Reuters.
After the hearing, at which he also gave oral evidence, Drummond
told reporters that he thought it was unlikely that the Government
would impose any conditions or controls on the deal.
Microsoft also appeared at the hearing, and General Counsel Brad
Smith told Senators that the deal would put Google in control of
80% of the market for both text and banner adverts on the
internet.
Google's Drummond countered with the argument that if the market
were a monopoly, Microsoft itself would not have paid $6 billion
for DoubleClick competitor aQuantive, a purchase the company
announced in May this year.
Google said at the hearing that it made a priority of privacy,
but the company has been in the headlines this week over an alleged
security breach in its Gmail internet email service. A security
researcher called Petko Petkov said that he had found a way to hack
the Gmail system and divert incoming emails to another mail
account.
Google's privacy policies have been under fire in recent months.
It announced earlier this year that it would delete identifying
information connecting people to their Google internet searches
after 18 to 24 months.
That provoked an outcry from users and privacy activists who had
not been aware that such logs had been kept indefinitely. The
company reduced the term to 18 months but still faces opposition
from privacy activists who believe that the data should not be
kept.
