Complaint Over Google-DoubleClick Acqusition Expected To Be Filed At FTC Today

Apr 20, 2007 at 12:11pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Google draws privacy complaint to FTC from News.com reports three organizations are going to file a joint complaint today with the Federal Trade Commission over Google’s proposed acquisition of DoubleClick.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), along with the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) and the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups (U.S. PIRG) are all calling for the FTC to delay Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick. They first want the FTC to investigate “Google’s data collection and storage practices” and for “DoubleClick to sweep out its data storehouse and require the search giant to offer a public plan for safeguarding consumer privacy.”

Former Anti-Trust Targets Microsoft And AT&T Raise Trust Worries Over Google-DoubleClick Deal has the view from some of Google’s competitors, while EU Group May Serve Google With Letter Over Data Retention Policies from yesterday covers how Google might be facing a privacy investigation in Europe.

Postscript: The complaint has been issued. Here are the full complaints:

- http://www.democraticmedia.org/PDFs/google_complaint.pdf - http://www.epic.org/privacy/ftc/google/epic_complaint.pdf

And some more news on this at News.com.

Postscript #2: DoubleClick: We don’t own consumer data from News.com has a statement on who owns what data. In short, DoubleClick says the data belongs to their clients and not to DoubleClick.

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.

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