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Consumer Watchdog said it obtained three years of Internet traffic from the Web metrics firm Experian Hitwise to analyze Web traffic to Google’s other services. It claims that it shows Google’s search results favor its services over competitors, a claim Google has repeatedly denied.
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Canada’s move follows confirmation that a U.S. Federal Trade Commission investigation of Google is also underway. The advocacy group Consumer Watchdog requested the FTC probe on May 17. The agency responded that it was “reviewing” that request.
Press Release
Google has been using its dominant position in online search to muscle its way into other Internet businesses, ultimately limiting consumer choice, Consumer Watchdog said today in a report written for its new Inside Google Website.
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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
Consumer Watchdog today called on the state attorneys general to investigate Google’s WiSpy snooping in their respective states to determine what state laws were broken.
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The report drew mixed reactions yesterday. The nonprofit Consumer Watchdog organization dismissed it as hype based on “cooked accounting” that counts benefits, but doesn’t consider the impact on some content providers and competitors who suffer from Google’s “monopolistic control of search.”
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John Simpson, a researcher for the nonprofit Consumer Watchdog who was the first to raise questions about McLaughlin’s appointment to the White House, said Google’s bumbling intellectual persona in Washington is just an act.
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The announcement drew an immediate response from a nonprofit consumer-advocacy organization, Consumer Watchdog. The group said Google’s motives in releasing the report were driven by “its attempts to quell worldwide outrage over the WiSpy scandal” and that this is “classic corporate PR spin to divert justified criticism.”
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At least one vocal critic of the company said the report overstates Google’s contributions. The company didn’t generate this economic activity so much as facilitate it, said John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog. There were other businesses that connected companies with customers before Google was founded 12 years ago, and the report failed to take into account lost revenue and jobs within those industries, notably media and advertising, he said.
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Consumer Watchdog said Google’s economic report relies on cooked accounting that only counts benefits while factoring in none of the costs Google places on society.
