WebProNews

Senate hearing looks at proposed Google, Yahoo deal

Michael Hintze, associate general counsel at Microsoft, told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation suggested Google could be tempted to relax privacy standards for the sake of profits.

The deal between Google and Yahoo to display Google ads on Yahoo's search results is in the process of receiving antitrust scrutiny from the Justice Department. Microsoft wants to make sure the Senate doesn't miss an opportunity to consider the deal, which puts Microsoft at a deeper disadvantage in competition with Google.

Hintze testified today on how Google's deal with Yahoo and with its purchase of DoubleClick endangers "a critical relationship between competition and privacy." Without significant competition, Hintze suggested, a significant risk exists that "a dominant player could generate additional profits by diluting its privacy practices."

He also attempted to link the Yahoo-Google deal to privacy concerns:

This has the potential to give Google, the market leader, further control over the sites and services where ads are served, enabling Google to collect even more data about computer users and potentially to combine that data with the personal information it has on those users.

It also will reduce competition in the search advertising market, and thereby weaken Google’s incentives to compete on the quality of its privacy practices. Both of these outcomes have implications for consumer privacy.

In recent weeks, Google stepped up its work on communicating its commitment to privacy. The company added a tiny link to its privacy policy on its home page just before July 4th, as well as linking those policies from its search results pages.