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The tech industry journalism giant CNET moved on to Google's "Do Not Call List" A recent story by CNET discussing the amount of personal information Google retains on its users has angered the search engine giant.

CNET, in researching their article, found quite a bit of information about Google chief Eric Schmidt. The information included details about his worth, his neighborhood and his political affiliation. The major objection to the story resulted from the publication of this information. However, all of the information about Schmidt was obtained through Google searches.

The story by Elinor Mills discussed Google's methods of trying to balance privacy concerns with the need for information. As a result of that article, CNET has been left with a lot of time-out in the sandbox to ponder their deeds because they'll remain their until July of next year.

This quote appears in her blog from yesterday as well as a story about Google look for chefs:

(Google representatives have instituted a policy of not talking with CNET News.com reporters until July 2006 in response to privacy issues raised by a previous story.)

As with most private entities, Google is certainly within their rights of determining who they choose to provide information too but many critics will attack Google for this behavior. Also, a number of forums are speculating a fair amount of negative stories coming from the CNET camp about Google in the coming months, as Mills is their primary writer on the search engine industry. There are certain types of information about the business Google must publicly disclose, as is the rule with any publicly traded company, but for most other information, it would seem CNET will have some issues.

With the Search Engine Strategies Conference slated to kick off next week in San Jose, this topic is sure to get a lot more discussion in the coming days. Continue the discussion on WebProWorld.

John Stith is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.