On December 2009, Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, declared after privacy concerns: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines - including Google - do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."[16]
Privacy International has raised concerns regarding the dangers and privacy implications of having a centrally-located, widely popular data warehouse of millions of Internet users' searches, and how under controversial existing U.S. law, Google can be forced to hand over all such information to the U.S. government.[17]
In its 2007 Consultation Report, Privacy International ranked Google as "Hostile to Privacy", its lowest rating on their report, making Google the only company in the list to receive that ranking.[18][19]
Carl Hewitt noted that intimate personal information is a "toxic asset" in Google datacenters because it will lead to government regulation "analogous to medical and legal practioners." Consequently, he recommended that Google should perform semantic integration in equipment controlled by a client so that client information in Google datacenters could be decrypted only by using a client's private key.[20][21]
In 2002, the non-profit group Public Information Research launched a website known as Google Watch, which advertised itself as "a look at Google's monopoly, algorithms, and privacy issues."[22][23] The site raised questions relating to Google's storage of cookies, which in 2007 had a life span of more than 32 years and incorporated a unique ID that enabled creation of a user data log.[24] Google Watch has also criticized Google's PageRank algorithms, saying that they discriminate against new websites and favor established sites,[25] and has made allegations about connections between Google and the NSA and the CIA.[26] Connection with the CIA has been discussed by others as well.[10] In February 2003, Google Watch nominated Google for a Big Brother Award, describing Google as a "privacy time bomb."[22] Google now anonymizes its IP data after 9 months and its cookies after 18 months, according to Google's privacy FAQ.[27]
