Maybe I should go with a headline some day of “Google NOT the target of any new investigations”. But I don’t think that would work because evidently that day shall never come. Alas. Fresh on the heels of that crushing 25 THOUSAND dollar fine we talked about yesterday, Google is now being probed by the Federal Trade Commission for bypassing the default privacy settings on Apple’s Safari browser.
This is the situation where Google’s tracking system was placing cookies on browsers even when users said they didn’t want them there. Google maintains that the way it got around that was legal and fair and not a sneaky hack. These are the situations that remind us that when it’s all said and done, Google is ultimately an advertising company first, and a supplier of cool web things second.
Meanwhile, privacy groups and the inevitable Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) are calling for renewed investigations over Google’s collection of data by those Street View cars.
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