Google Library Project & Privacy Concerns

Privacy issues with Google library
Published: June 17, 2005,
By Elinor Mills Staff Writer, CNET News.com

A contract between Google and the University of Michigan released publicly on Friday contains no provisions for protecting the privacy of people who will eventually be able to search the school's vast library collection over the Internet.

Google announced plans late last year to digitize and index as many as 7 million volumes of material from the University of Michigan to make them searchable on the Internet as part of its Google Print service, a searchable index of books. Google also has agreements with Harvard, Oxford, the New York Public Library and Stanford, where Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page began their search work before launching their company in 1998.

While the library projects have prompted copyright concerns from university groups and publishers, privacy issues are the latest wrinkle in Google's plans to expand the universe of Web-searchable data.

"I would have hoped that the University of Michigan would be sensitive to the fact that Google tracks everything that everyone searches," said Daniel Brandt, founder of the Google-watch.org Web site, which is highly critical of the search company's policies.

A Google spokesman was not available to respond directly to that comment late Friday, but said earlier that Google Print does not require users to share any personally identifiable information.

Full paper in: News.com