As the debate grows over Google’s growing threats to consumer privacy, we want to point to an important paper given to FTC today. It’s by Peter Swire, who is a professor and senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. The full document can be accessed here. Here’s a key excerpt from “Protecting Consumers: Privacy Matters in Antitrust Analysis.” Peter Swire. Center for American Progress. 10/19/2007.
“The proposed merger may illustrate one such effect on quality. Currently, an individual using search at Google and clicking on the occasional ad has one or more cookies set by Google. (Individuals may also use one or more fully-identified products of Google’s, such as through Gmail.) Google has much less information, however, about where the individual goes after leaving the Google sites. Google often has “deep” information about an individual’s actions, such as detailed information about search terms. Currently, DoubleClick sets one or more cookies on an individual’s computers, and receives detailed information about which sites the person visits while surfing. DoubleClick has “broad” information about an individual’s actions, with its leading ability to pinpoint where a person surfs.
If the merger is approved, then individuals using the market leader in search may face a search product that has both “deep” and “broad” collection of information. For the many millions of individuals with high privacy preferences, this may be a significant reduction in the quality of the search product—search previously was conducted without the combined deep and broad tracking, and now the combination will exist. I am not in a position to quantify the harm to consumers from such a reduction in quality.”
