Google has found itself facing additional controversy in Europe, as Spain, France and the Czech Republic all announced investigations into the inadvertent collection of data by the search engine giant’s Street View cars. That follows news that Germany and Italy will launch their own inquiries into Google and the Street View service, which uses vehicles equipped with cameras to capture an eye-level view of local terrain worldwide.
In the course of that driving around and image taking, the Street View cars managed to obtain 600GB of “payload data” from unsecured Wi-Fi networks. The data could consist of anything from e-mails and passwords to more personal information.
Viviane Reding, justice commissioner for the European Union in Brussels, wrote in a statement sent to eWEEK on 18 May that it “is not acceptable that a company operating in the EU does not respect EU rules.” Reding also suggested that the processing of personal data by Google Street View apparently falls under the umbrella of the EU’s Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC and is therefore subject to its provisions.
European regulators have a history of taking particularly aggressive action against large technology companies—including Microsoft and Oracle—seen as overstepping their bounds with regard to privacy and antitrust. Microsoft recently introduced a “Web browser choice screen” to European Windows users, after the European Commission, the EU’s antitrust regulatory body, expressed concerns about the potentially anti-competitive aspects of bundling Internet Explorer with the operating system. The danger for those companies, of course, is that such investigations and actions have the potential to not only lead to millions of dollars in fines and losses, but also disrupt their strategy in various market segments.
For more go to : E-Week
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