Google at the heart of a data protection storm

As the public becomes more alive to data privacy issues, searching questions are being asked of organisations holding our data; about how it is used, how it is protected and why we should trust them with it. Businesses are waking up to the fact that they need to be more open about their data protection strategies and ‘walk the walk’ as well as ‘talking the talk’.One organisation that has received a lot of focus in the data privacy arena recently is Google, one of the world's leading search engines. It holds data on users capable of linking them to their search terms, revealing intimate information about their personal lives.This article looks at the privacy concerns facing search engines, Google's current approach to privacy, and the work it has to do to convince European privacy regulators that this approach really does comply with data protection legislation.