News Clipping
John Simpson, from the Consumer Watchdog, told the BBC: “The problem is [Google] have a bunch of engineers who push the envelope and gather as much information as they can and don’t think about the ramifications of that.”
News Clipping
Consumer Watchdog, a group that has become one of Google’s most outspoken critics, renewed its call for a regulatory crackdown Friday. “Once again, Google has demonstrated a lack of concern for privacy,” said Consumer Watchdog’s John Simpson. “Its computer engineers run amok, push the envelope and gather whatever data they can until their fingers are caught in the cookie jar.”
Press Release
An admission today that Google’s StreetView cars were gathering private information from WiFi networks shows the company’s lack of concern for privacy and the need for government inspection of the data the company is collecting and storing, Consumer Watchdog said.
News Clipping
“Here they are just out and out snooping in neighborhoods and spying on people,” said John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog, a frequent Google critic who questioned whether Google violated wiretapping laws.
News Clipping
Perhaps the toughest shareholder question came from consumer advocate John Simpson, who asked Schmidt whether Google had agreed to a reported $700 million “kill fee” if Google’s $750 million acquisition of the mobile advertising company AdMob is rejected by government antitrust regulators. Schmidt neither confirmed or denied that number, but predicted the deal would be approved by the Federal Trade Commission, which is expected to rule in coming days.
News Clipping
Those numbers might have gone unnoticed if not for a handful of critics who fear Google is becoming too dominant in its markets and is seeking to become too influential in Washington, D.C. Perhaps chief among those critics is John Simpson, a consumer advocate at the nonprofit Consumer Watchdog. Simpson says he would like to see the Justice Department launch a broad antitrust investigation of Google.
Blog Post
Consumers worried about the data Google amasses about them as they use the Internet giant’s search engine have used a service called Scroogle.org. This week the nonprofit service was abruptly disrupted, prompting questions about whether Google deliberately targeted the operation.
Blog Post
With the classic timing of those who want to downplay bad news, Google responded late Friday afternoon to a letter of complaint issued by ten countries last month about the misfired rollout of the Google Buzz social networking application when Google exposed Gmail users’ personal e-mail contacts to the online world without user consent.
Blog Post
As we ready Inside Google, now in “Beta” mode, for its formal launch I’ve been checking various search engines to see where the site ranks. Today Google put me at number one.
Blog Post
As we have been putting Consumer Watchdog’s new Inside Google Website through its paces while it’s still in “Beta” mode, I discovered an example of exactly the sort thing Google needs to explain.
