Inside Google

SANTA MONICA, CA — Consumer Watchdog today praised state attorneys general for voicing their concerns about Google’s changes in privacy polices and asking for a meeting with the Internet giant’s CEO Larry Page. Attorneys general from 35 other states and territories joined Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler in sending the letter. They gave Google a week to reply.

Privacy group Consumer Watchdog praised the White House privacy announcement, although the group had not seen the proposals as of Wednesday evening. “From what I understand to be in it, the report may represent real progress,” said John Simpson, privacy project director for the group. “Enforceable codes of conduct could matter. Baseline privacy legislation could make a difference.”

“Google has clearly engaged in ‘unfair and deceptive’ practices,” said Consumer Watchdog privacy project director John Simpson, Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project director. “They have been lying about how people can protect their privacy in their instructions about how to opt out of receiving targeted advertising.”

An FTC spokesman said the agency had received the Consumer Watchdog complaint but said he could not comment further. “We are taking immediate steps to address concerns and we are happy to answer any questions regulators and others may have,” Google said in a statement when asked to comment.

The group Consumer Watchdog and some lawmakers asked publicly whether Google had violated last year’s settlement agreement with the Federal Trade Commission over an unrelated privacy breach. Some tech watchers said that while the company’s actions are certainly questionable, the full extent of the breach probably exceeded what Google had intended to do, as Google itself maintains.

“Google falsely told Safari users that they could control the collection of data…when in fact Google was circumventing the preference,” wrote John Simpson, the privacy-project director with the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog. Another advocacy group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, also made similar charges.

The day after a Wall Street Journal report that Google and other ad networks bypassed settings on Apple‘s Safari Web browser — which doesn’t allow certain third-party cookies — reactions are mixed. While some tech bloggers are saying, basically, that the WSJ report is blowing this thing out of proportion, one persistent Google critic, the Consumer Watchdog advocacy group, has reportedly already asked the FTC to investigate. And Microsoft, which is no friend of Google’s, has also weighed in and blasted its competitor. There’s no getting around it: This looks bad for Google, which lately seems to be putting out one PR fire after another.

Google is among a handful of companies that used a certain unusual characteristic of Apple’s Safari Web browser to insert tracking cookies on users’ machines, according to recent research from a Stanford grad student. The news has outraged consumer advocacy groups, though Google claims it was using known Safari functionality to provide features that signed in Google users had enabled.

Google’s actions also prompted Consumer Watchdog to send a letter to the FTC and demand action against Google. “Safari users with the browser set to block third-party cookies thought they were not being tracked,” John Simpson, privacy project director of Consumer Watchdog, said in the letter. “Nonetheless, because of an element invisible to the user, but designed to mimic a form, DoubleClick was able to set tracking cookies in an obvious violation of the set preference.”

Consumer Watchdog, a frequent Google critic, accused the company of lying and urged the Federal Trade Commission to take “immediate action” to crack down on the “unfair and deceptive trade practices.”