Google DoubleClick deal faces more opposition

Search engine giant Google recently announced that they were acquiring the online advertising company DoubleClick. The deal is worth around US$ 3.1 billion and has been criticized by competitors including Microsoft and telecom company AT&T.

Interestingly, the acquisition deal is now facing more criticism. This time from three U.S. online civil rights groups. These are Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG).

These groups are now asking the FTC to block the merger unless the two companies guarantee that they would protect Internet users’ privacy.

These three groups are demanding that the two companies would destroy all cookies and other persistent identifiers resulting from Internet searches that are or could be personally identifiable once a user terminates a session with Google.

This could become a major problem for the search engine giant Google as most of its services are related to the previous search history of a user which the company uses to give suggestions and related advertising.

The three online civil rights groups have demanded in their latter to the FTC: “Neither Google nor DoubleClick have taken adequate steps to safeguard the personal data that is collected. Moreover, the proposed acquisition will create unique risks to privacy and will violate previously agreed standards for the conduct of online advertising.”

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