The head of a consumer online privacy watchdog says US regulators should look into Google’s new personalised search to see whether there are antitrust or privacy issues.
“Google is an entrenched player trying to fight off its challenger Facebook by using its market dominance in a separate sector,” Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), told the Los Angeles Times. “I think that should trouble people.”
Rotenberg also said the personalised results will make personal data of users on Google+ more accessible, which may raise privacy concerns.
He said he is considering filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), asking the agency to investigate the Google search update. “We believe this is something that the FTC needs to look at,” he said.
The new service will see Google pluck results most relevant to each user, not just from billions of Web pages but from the personal information shared with contacts on its Google+ social network.
New services will incorporate results from a user’s friends and profile in the social network Google+, as well as people, pages and profiles in a user’s network or adjacent to it.
The service will only work if a user is signed in to their Google account, and a new button on the search results page will allow people to toggle between results from the web and from what Google is calling “Your World”.
