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A trio of privacy advocate organizations have petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to block Google's $3.1 billion purchase of ad network DoubleClick, citing concerns about the information Google would control.

Protests Begin Over Google's DoubleClick Buy

That information consists of the online activity of 80 to 85 percent of Internet users, according to the Electronic Privacy Information Center. EPIC filed their complaint on April 19th with the FTC, six days after Google announced the purchase.

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG) and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) also signed on to EPIC's filing with the FTC. EPIC claims Google and DoubleClick have not taken adequate steps to protect the personal data they collect.

"The acquisition of DoubleClick will permit Google to track both a person’s Internet searches and a person’s web site visits. This could impact the privacy interests of 233 million Internet users in North America, 314 million Internet users in Europe, and more than 1.1 billion Internet users around the world," EPIC said.

Google's deputy general counsel blasted EPIC's complaint. Her statement in the San Francisco Chronicle said: "EPIC utterly fails to identify any practice that does not comply with accepted privacy standards. Nothing about the proposed acquisition of DoubleClick changes our commitment to these privacy principles."

EPIC has characterized Google's statements about protecting user privacy as "vague." They are particularly concerned about Google's plans to merge DoubleClick data with the information in Google's indexes.

DoubleClick has clashed with EPIC previously. In February 2000, EPIC filed a complaint with the FTC over DoubleClick's plans to combine "surfing records with detailed personal profiles contained in a national marketing database."

Several class action lawsuits, plus attention from the Michigan and New York Attorney Generals, caused DoubleClick to back off those plans. The database they planned to use contained about 100 million personal profiles. Compared to what Google and DoubleClick could put together with their agreement, that figure looks Spartan by comparison.