Benefiting from its dominant position Google might tend to privilege its own specialised services through its general search engine, for example its price comparison website, to the detriment of healthy competition. Other problems could result from using a dominant position on the web search market to take over ancillary markets. Complaints have thus been lodged, in particular in Germany and Italy, by press publishers who denounce the link between Google News and general web searches. For having refused to be referenced on Google News – Google not considering any payment for the use of their contents – certain publishers have been deleted from the general search engine. This was observed again at the beginning of July, 2011, when Google made Belgian francophone press publisher sites disappear from the results of its web search engine. ‘In such a case,’ adds Alain Strowel, ‘Google used its dominant position as a general search engine and that could constitute an abuse.’ The European Commission is currently investigating the way in which Google is said to abuse its dominant position.

The use of personal data as the price for being cost free

7. Private life. On the internet, what is cost free comes at a price, and it is paid in personal data. Google is particularly fond of these little units of private life which allow it to refine its advertising targeting in particular. The Google search engine, for example, is based in part on the personal data of internet users (website hit history, online registration data, IP addresses, etc.) to better target the results and advertisements which appear on their search page. Google thus retains every trace of its users’ tastes, relationships and intentions.

Intrusion into private life takes on new form with Google StreetView. Launched in 2007 in the United States, the StreetView tool was created to navigate virtually the roads of the entire world. Google Buses mounted with panoramic cameras thus surveyed the cities to take photographs of the urban arteries. ‘Reactions varied according to the country. In Germany, a country which is certainly at the forefront of the protection of private life, certain home owners wanted to mask  the front of their houses, considering their being placed online as a violation of private life.’  A more passionate polemic broke out in the Spring of 2010. In roaming the streets in order to take photographs the Mountain View company picked up – ‘by mistake’, it says – the personal data which were circulating on Wi-Fi networks (email excerpts, website visit histories, banking data, passwords connected to IP addresses, etc.). All data which are so important in strategic terms for advertising services. In France, the CNIL (Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés) attacked Google in the courts and the company was convicted of infringements of private life and fined 100,000 Euros, a sum never before reached in the area of the right to private life. In Belgium a higher fine could be set for this infringement. The central question here remains one of deciding whether there should be a system of objecting after the fact or of gaining consent beforehand. ‘In the same way as copyright laws, private life legislation is based on prior consent being granted. To go back to the example of StreetView Google should gain the permission of every property owner before showing their houses. Yet that is unmanageable. For the moment Google prefers to reverse the principles of the right to private life and give individuals the opportunity of signalling problems after the fact.’