Google Announces Agreement to Acquire DoubleClick: On April 13, 2007, Google announced an agreement to acquire online advertising giant DoubleClick, Inc. for $3.1 billion. See Google's Press Release on the agreement. Google has already expressed an intent to merge data from Google and DoubleClick to profile and target Internet users.
On April 20, 2007, EPIC, CDD, and US PIRG filed a complaint (pdf) with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), urging the Commission to open an investigation into the proposed acquisition of DoubleClick by Google. The groups urged the FTC to assesses the ability of Google to record, analyze, track, and profile the activities of Internet users with data that is both personally identifiable and data that is not personally identifiable. The groups stressed that the increased collection of personal information of Internet users by Internet advertisers poses far-reaching privacy concerns that the FTC should address. The groups further noted that Google fails to follow previously agreed upon standards for online advertising conduct, and urged the FTC to to require Google to publicly present a plan to comply with these standards. Pending the resolution of these and other issues, EPIC encouraged the FTC to halt the acquisition.
Quote:
Originally Posted by takeshi
Can you list actual sources for this claim? I've never heard of them releasing anything freely to the US government.
|