BRUSSELS, Belgium - A leading privacy advocate and the only Federal Trade Commission member who voted against approving Google's acquisition of DoubleClick are among the witnesses scheduled to testify Monday at a European Union hearing about the privacy implications of the pending merger.
The hearing gathered MEPs, consumer organizations and European and American computer industry representatives. Issues discussed include advertising, governmental use of commercial data, what constitutes "personal data" and issues related to search engines, such as whether they retain information entered.
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said before the hearing that he planned to tell the European Parliament committee on civil liberties, justice and home affairs that U.S. legislators are concerned about the privacy implications of the deal.
"We want people to understand that the FTC decision was really a surprise to a lot of people," he said. "There was statement after statement after statement from Congress to the FTC that they had to do something about privacy."
The FTC approved the deal without any restrictions late last year in a 4-1 vote, but the European authorities are still reviewing the proposed $3.1 billion buyout. If the deal is not approved in Europe, it will not go through, despite the FTC clearance.
Privacy advocates are concerned that Google will combine its information about users' search queries with DoubleClick data, which website users visit to create highly detailed consumer profiles.
In November 2007, Senators Herb Kohl (chairman of the antitrust subcommittee) and Orrin Hatch (the high-ranking Republican on the committee), told the FTC they worried that the merger carries "profound and potentially far-reaching" implications for the Internet ad market and "raises fundamental consumer privacy concerns."
Additionally, 12 Republican Congress members called for a hearing on whether Google's proposed buyout of DoubleClick would compromise Web users' privacy.
FTC member Pamela Jones Harbour, the only commissioner against clearing the deal, did not plan to deliver prepared remarks, according to an aide. She planned to speak from notes, depending on the direction of the seminar.
Harbour previously expressed wariness about the merger's privacy ramifications.
"The truth is [that] we really do not know what Google-DoubleClick can or will do with its trove of information about consumers' Internet habits," she wrote in her dissent. "The merger creates a firm with vast knowledge of consumer preferences, subject to very little accountability."
But Jones Harbour also wrote that privacy concerns should be addressed on an industry-wide basis.
Representatives from Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and the industry groups the Interactive Advertising Bureau in Europe and Network Advertising Initiative also are expected to testify or submit statements.
"Google takes the issue of privacy very seriously," Google's privacy counsel Peter Fleischer said through a spokesman. "Online privacy is an issue which affects the entire online industry, as well as users, so it is important that we all contribute to a dialogue on good industry practices, so that we can develop a common framework of self-regulation across the world."
Rotenberg said he also planned to call the European authorities' attention to FTC Chair Deborah Platt Majoras' refusal to recuse herself from the matter, even though her husband is a partner at a law firm representing DoubleClick.
Majoras decided last year that her husband's involvement with the firm, Jones Day, didn't require her to step aside from the case because he changed his status to non-equity partner in 2006, meaning that he no longer shares in the firm's profits. Majoras also said Jones Day has not appeared before the FTC in the matter.
MEPs on Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee broadcast live from the public hearing on data protection and the Internet beginning at 3 p.m. CET (6 a.m. PST) on Monday.
