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Google Agrees to Turn Over Wi-Fi Data to European Regulators

by Terrence O'Brien on June 4, 2010 at 09:00 AM

googleA few weeks ago Google admitted that it had inadvertently collected personal data being sent over Wi-Fi networks as its Street View cars made their way around the globe. Google collected certain data to identify networks and locations for later processing of the images it captured, however the company sucked up some extra data. Google simply wanted to erase the data and move on, but European regulators had a different idea.

After a two week standoff between Google and German authorities, CEO Eric Schmidt has announced that the search company will turn over the roughly 600GB of data collected. Google will also publish an audit performed on the data by an external (non-governmental) entity in an effort to quell the controversy. The data won't be the only thing being examined, though. Google is performing an internal audit of its privacy practices and is double checking all code related to data corrections for possible violations.

Schmidt made no excuses, telling the Financial Times, "we screwed up," and hoped that the company's transparency in handling the situation would earn back customer trust. Only time will tell, but that trust will be much harder to earn if European investigators find any reason to press criminal charges. Kudos to Google for handling this like a mature, responsible mega-corporation. [From: Financial Times]

Tags: data, data collection, DataCollection, europe, google, google wifi data, GoogleWifiData, privacy, street view, StreetView, top, wifi, wifi data, WifiData

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