You’ve woken up to a whole new Google this morning. Every one of Google’s products, from big strong Search and YouTube down to Google Scholar and Google Patent Search (yes, I had to look those up), is gathering information about what you’re doing and pooling it to form a cohesive file of you. Google will then use that pooled information to sell you ads. We’ve talked about this at LENGTH around the Marketplace family of programs although there are plenty of reports that most people still don’t know it’s happening, despite Google’s frequent messaging.
Europe isn’t happy about this new system. The EU tends to be a lot more aggressive about regulation than the U.S. and there was a lot of talk about getting Google to cancel or delay the program. Now that it’s live, there will be plenty of talk about lawsuits to stop it.
France’s privacy watchdog CNIL wrote to Google earlier this week, urging a “pause” in rolling out the revised policy.
“The CNIL and EU data authorities are deeply concerned about the combination of personal data across services,” the regulator wrote.
“They have strong doubts about the lawfulness and fairness of such processing, and its compliance with European data protection legislation.”
The regulator said it would send Google questions on the changes by mid-March. On Thursday, Ms Reding told BBC Radio 4’s World At One that conclusions from initial investigations had left CNIL “deeply concerned”.
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