The furore over Google’s Search Plus Your World update rages on, with the latest development likely to be the most worrying for the search engine giant. However, the rhetoric Google has flung back suggests it’s ready for a fight.
On Thursday, in the States, a complaint was failed by consumer online privacy watchdog the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), with the US regulators, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
The EPIC complaint requests that the FTC investigate the new feature, citing that it favours Google’s own networks. More pertinently though, the text of the complaint also claims that the change is violating the privacy of the users.
In an open letter to the FTC, the executive director for EPIC, Marc Rotenburg, also talks about the fact the G+ users are not able to opt out of the new feature. How many complaints EPIC have received from users in regard to this is not known at this time however.
Predictably enough, Google have reacted vehemently to the complaint.
“…Search Plus … simply helps people rediscover information they already have access to. We’ve taken special care … to provide robust security protections, transparency and control….”
Unsurprisingly, many have touted this move as being an “Epic fail for Google”. You can see what they did there; it must have taken much thought. However, already subjected to a loud chorus of complaints from Twitter, and a great many people with SEO jobs around the globe, this could certainly be interesting episode to watch.
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