Google will stop talking to C|Net until July 2006

Google has decided to stop commenting on news site C|Net until July 2006 turns out from the closing paragraph of an article about the search giant. The reason given by Google for this is that in an earlier article by the same C|Net author, privacy-sensitive data of Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, was described. This data was found via Google and the article asked questions about the privacy policy of the search giant. Schmidt was not happy about this and banned C|Net for a year. This is strange, thus The Register, because with this Schmidt in fact indicates that he does not like that this kind of information is freely available via Google, his own company. At the same time, Schmidt’s attitude also makes it clear that search sites, not only Google but also, for example, MSN and Yahoo, are increasingly able to make privacy-sensitive information available in a simple manner. The question is, however, whether this is a desirable development, according to the C|Net author.