EU raises privacy aspects of Google deal

EU parliamentarians are turning a competition review of Google takeover plans into a debate about online privacy, the search engine is claiming.

In October, Europe's competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, said the investigation into Google's $3.1bn (£1.5bn) bid for internet advertiser DoubleClick would consider only market issues.

But the question of the takeover was raised at a European Parliament discussion on the impact of the internet on citizen privacy yesterday.

"The reason [Google] wants to have the data is because it gives [it] a competitive advantage," said Dutch MEP Sophie in 't Veld, according to the Reuters news agency.

"It is business. I don't think it can be completely disconnected. And we should discuss that side of things too," said in 't Veld.

But Google's legal team claim the issues should be kept separate.

"People [are] trying to take a privacy case and shoehorn it into a competition law review," said lawyer Peter Fleischer, according to Reuters.

"I can understand that people continue to peddle this theory in Europe after having lost in the United States."

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) signed off the DoubleClick deal last month.

But privacy campaigners are worried about the deal. They claim it will give Google a strong presence in the display advertising market which, combined with its dominance of pay-per-click searches, would give the company both unprecedented consumer data and a potential stranglehold on internet advertising.

Last year Google confirmed plans to anonymise all customer information after 18 to 24 months.