Inside Google

Reports of a deal between Google and Verizon on “net neutrality’ are generating another public relations backlash against the Internet giant. The agreement, said the New York Times, “could allow Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content’s creators are willing to pay for the privilege.

Nonprofit group Consumer Watchdog portrayed any compromise by Google on net neutrality as a betrayal. “Apparently Google redefines principles to suit the business need of the moment,” said John Simpson, a consumer advocate with the group. “What Google and Verizon are trying to do is carve up the Internet behind closed doors for their own benefit.”

SANTA MONICA, CA — Google is compromising a long standing principle it claimed to support in an effort to boost profits as it backs away from a key premise of an open Internet — “net neutrality,” Consumer Watchdog said today.

The report in Wired last week about a high-tech firm funded jointly by Google and the CIA, Recorded Future, not only signaled a growing skepticism about the most popular Internet search engine. It also pointed up the dangers of the lack of transparency poses for Google.

Google has a stranglehold on search with 65 percent of the U.S. market — and even more in some other countries — but writing in Fortune magazine, Michael C. Copeland, says the Internet giant needs to find new sources of revenue or lose its status as a growth company.

Investors at the CIA and Google are backing a company called “Recorded Future” that monitors tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts in real time in order to find patterns, events and relationships that may predict the future. The news comes amidst Google’s so-called “Wi-Spy” scandal, that refers to revelations that Google’s Street View cars operating in some thirty countries snooped on private Wi-Fi networks over the last three years.

According to a new poll from Consumer Watchdog a major part of Americans are very concerned about the privacy issues arousing from Google’s Street View data collection. Much covered reports about Google’s gathering private information from users’ WiFi networks make US consumers doubt in the efficiency of privacy protection measures implemented today, they want better privacy protections put in place.

Google received U.S. government security certification for its Apps for Government products on this week, a milestone for the search giant whose quest for government cloud computing contracts has been marred by its failure to meet deadlines for converting the City of Los Angeles email system.

We need your help. Sign our petition and demand that Google comes clean about the Wi-Spy scandal. Demand that Congress hold hearings immediately into the question of why Google thinks it’s OK to gather our private data and what they plan on doing with it. Google must also explain its relationship with the National Security Agency.