Google Is Angry With Cnet.com

According to a post on Slashdot, Cnet News.com reports that Google is no longer talking to Cnet reporters.

In July, Cnet published an article entitled "Google balances privacy, reach" which analyzed some privacy concerns about services such as Gmail, Google Web Accelerator and Google Desktop Search.

In the first version of this article, the author implied Google Desktop Search can track what is stored on a user's PC. Later on the article was corrected and now it has a note attached saying that "The service does not expose a user's content to Google or anyone else without the user's explicit permission".

A few days ago, reporting about the fact that Google announced that it's looking to hire two new executive chiefs, the author said in the end of the article: "Google could not be immediately reached for comment. (Google representatives have instituted a policy of not talking with CNET News.com reporters until July 2006 in response to privacy issues raised by a previous story.)"

In fact, the problem of how Google is protecting the privacy of users came in debate when Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said in an interview "Google is poised to trump Microsoft in its potential to invade privacy, and it's very hard for many consumers to get it because the Google brand name has so much trust. But if you step back and look at the suite of products and how they are used, you realize Google can have a lot of personal information about individuals' Internet habits: e-mail, saving search history, images, personal information from Orkut (social network site); it represents a significant threat to privacy."

David Krane, Google spokesman, told CNN that the company declined to comment.