News Clipping
Consumer advocate John Simpson said he was happy to see Missouri asking for an explanation. “Google’s … operation compromised consumers’ privacy in the very heartland of America,” said Simpson, an advocate with California’s Consumer Watchdog, in an e-mail message. “The Internet giant needs to be held accountable.”
Blog Post
My Google search results are looking too familiar. Looking for something new on the web for a topic of continuing interest, I enter some familiar terms. The same old sites keep turning up. OK, so Google is returning the most relevant results, based on the Google algorithm. Why do they seem so stale?
News Clipping
Consumer Watchdog continues to push its case that Google Inc. is behaving as an illegal monopoly, releasing a report this morning that alleges the company is abusing is dominance in online search to direct users to its own services.
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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.
Blog Post
Last Tuesday in this space, I opted out of Google’s “interest-based advertising.” Later the same day, Google unveiled an opt-out tool for another personal information collection agent – Google Analytics.
Website owners can use Google Analytics to track visitors on their sites and Google collects the data from all the visits for its own use.
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.”
News Clipping
Meanwhile, consumer advocacy group Consumer Watchdog on Wednesday urged state attorneys general to investigate whether the company broke wiretap, privacy and unfair business practices laws. The group also called on state authorities to demand that Google preserve all documents relating to its data-collection activities because they could be evidence in criminal or civil cases.
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.
News Clipping
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.
