The Data Protection Commissioner of the German state of
Shleswig-Holstein Thilo Weichert has written to Europe's
Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes expressing his view that the
merger would allow the combined company unprecedented access to
personal data about users.
"At present we have to assume that in the event of a takeover of
DoubleClick the databases of that company will be integrated into
those of Google, with the result that fundamental provisions of the
European Data Protection Directive will be violated," he said,
according to Germany's Heise Online.
Wiechert said that access to the combined database would give
the company access to highly detailed personal information. "Such
an approach contradicts fundamental data privacy principles of the
European Union: limited specific use, transparency, the right to
object, the protection of sensitive data and the right to having
data deleted," he wrote.
Google is already under fire in Europe over its use of
identifying information linking users to their internet searches.
When it offered to delete these after 18–24 months earlier this
year the fact that the data had been kept indefinitely caused
outrage amongst users and privacy regulators.
Google is facing competition hurdles in Europe and the US over
its proposed acquisition of DoubleClick. Google's dominance in
internet search combined with DoubleClick's position as a leading
advertising firm have led to concerns about privacy and about
competition issues.
Google appeared before a Senate hearing in the US last week to
argue that the deal would not create an internet advertising
monopoly.
A complaint has also been filed with Kroes by the European
Consumers' Organisation (BEUC). "We fear that Google will
vertically-leverage (bundle/tie) its keyword search dominance with
DoubleClick's leadership in online banner/video display
advertising, and with its Google-YouTube dominance in video
search," said that complaint. "This vertical combination could give
Google-DoubleClick clear dominance on the overall market for
advertisements provided to third-party websites. Google alone
currently holds a 90% share of the search market in Germany, nearly
a 75% in the U.K., around 82% share in France and 90% in
Spain."
"Never before has one single company had the market and
technological power to collect and exploit so much information
about what a user does on the Internet," said the complaint. "With
DoubleClick’s cookie-tracking technologies, and Google’s
ever-increasing breadth of online services (from mail and
messaging, to mapping, electronic payment, office applications,
user-generated video and blogging spaces, and so on), a particular
user’s online activities will be trackable by a single entity on a
much more continuous and universal level than ever before."
The BEUC said that this gathering of data was "in clear
violation of users' privacy rights".
