As Google Grows, Is Privacy Shrinking?

Perhaps the biggest threat to Google Inc.'s increasing dominance of Internet search and advertising is the rising fear, justified or not, that Google's broadening reach is giving it unchecked power.

This scrutiny goes deeper than the skeptical eye that lawmakers and the Justice Department have given to Google's proposed ad partnership with Yahoo Inc. Google last week scrapped its Internet advertising to avoid a challenge from the U.S. Justice Department.

Many objections to that deal were financial, and surround whether Google and Yahoo could unfairly drive up online ad prices.

A bigger long-term concern for Google could be criticisms over something less tangible - privacy. Increasingly, as Google burrows deeper into everyday computing, its product announcements are prompting questions about its ability to gather more potentially sensitive personal information from users.

Google - whose corporate motto is "Don't Be Evil" - sees such concerns as misinformed.

But whether the criticisms are valid or not, they are likely indicative of the battles Google will face as it, like Microsoft Corp. in the 1990s, moves from world-wowing startup to the heart of the technology establishment.

The September release of Chrome illuminated the budding conflicts.

To Google, the new browser is a platform on which future Web-based software applications might run most efficiently.

In other circles, Chrome provoked suspicion. One group, Santa Monica, Calif.-based Consumer Watchdog, argues that the browser crosses a new line.

One of Consumer Watchdog's complaints surrounds Chrome's navigation bar. The group points out that as users type in the navigation bar, Chrome relays their keystrokes to Google even before they click "Enter" to finalize the command.

"The company is literally having this unnoticed conversation with itself about you and your information," Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court said.

Google's senior product counsel, Michael Yang, said the company is not using any data from Chrome to make improvements to its ad services.

But that doesn't mollify privacy critics. Some 650 million people use Google's search engine and panoply of Web services.

Court says that Google has more opportunities than its peers to capture personal information without users realizing it.

"Google's founders may say, 'We're going to protect that information,' but no other company," he said, "is positioned to exploit that information in the way Google is."