Google Privacy: EU Countries Take Action

A group of European regulators has brought legal action against Google to try and force the tech giant to overhaul its privacy practices.

Data protection authorities from France, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and Italy agreed on the joint action after Google failed to reverse changes it made to its policy last year.

If successful, the regulators could impose fines or restrictions on Google's operations across the entire 27-country European Union.

Last year Google merged 60 separate privacy policies from around the world into one universal procedure.

The European organisations say the new policy does not allow users to figure out which information is kept, how it is combined by Google services or how long the company retains it.

The European regulators, led by the French, have demanded specifics for anyone using Google on what is being collected and a simpler presentation.

Any fines would have a limited financial impact on Google but successful legal action could hurt its image and block its ability to collect such data until it addresses the regulators' concerns.

Proposed Europe-wide data protection legislation will take until at least 2015 to be fully implemented.

Successful legal action could hurt Google's image

Google dominates the European market for internet searches. According to one survey, 95% of searches in Europe are carried out through Google, compared with about 65% in the US.

Tensions are ramping up between privacy organisations and technology companies due to their growing ability to spin online usage data into vast profits.

This is especially the case in Europe where privacy laws tend to be strong and nearly every country has a regulatory body.

However, internet users have consistently shown a willingness to give up privacy in exchange for convenience and new online services that Google and other tech companies offer.

Google says it merged its myriad privacy policies in March 2012 for the sake of simplicity, and that the changes comply with European laws.

But Johannes Caspar, a German data protection commissioner, says the company's policies are vague - it uses the word 'may' dozens of times on a single page when describing its rights to data.

"Many users don't even know what is happening with their data and might worry that their private information is used to produce personality profiles of them," Mr Caspar said.

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