Google apologises for wi-fi grab

Internet search leader Google has apologised for grabbing fragments of people's online activities broadcast over public Wi-Fi networks over a four-year period.

The breach of web etiquette is likely to raise more privacy worries about the company, which issued a public apology yesterday.

Google said it only recently discovered the problem in response to an inquiry from German regulators.

"Maintaining people's trust is crucial to everything we do, and in this case we fell short," Alan Eustace, Google's top engineering executive, wrote in a blog post.

Google described its collection of snippets from emails and web surfing done on public Wi-Fi networks as a mistake and said it had taken steps to avoid a recurrence.

About 600 gigabytes of data was taken off of the Wi-Fi networks in more than 30 countries. Google said it planned to delete it all as soon as it gained clearance from government authorities.

None of the information had appeared in Google's search engine or other services, according to Mr Eustace, but Google's decision to hold on to the Wi-Fi data until it hears from regulators shows the company realises it could face legal repercussions.

At the very least, company officials concede that snooping on Wi-Fi networks, however inadvertent, crossed an ethical line.

"We are acutely aware that we failed badly here," Mr Eustace wrote.

But Google's contrition may not be enough to allay growing concerns about whether the company can be trusted with the vast storehouse of personal information that it has gathered through its search engine, email and other services.

Fears that Google is morphing into a real-life version of Big Brother has spurred previous privacy complaints, as well as pleas for more stringent regulation of the company.

Consumer Watchdog, a group that has become one of Google's most outspoken critics, renewed its call for a regulatory crackdown.

"Once again, Google has demonstrated a lack of concern for privacy," said Consumer Watchdog's John Simpson.

"Its computer engineers run amok, push the envelope and gather whatever data they can until their fingers are caught in the cookie jar."

The Wi-Fi data was sucked up while Google expanded a mapping feature called Street View that has also alarmed privacy campaigners.

Street View provides photographs of neighbourhoods taken by Google cameras that have sometimes captured people doing things they did not want to be seen doing, or in places where they did not want to be seen.

As it set out to photograph neighbourhoods around the world, Google equipped its vehicles with antenna as well as cameras so it could create a database with the names of Wi-Fi networks and the coding of Wi-Fi routers.

What Google did not know, Mr Eustace said, was that some experimental software was being used in the Street View project, and that programming picked up the web surfing on publicly accessible Wi-Fi networks if the company's vehicles were within range of the signal.

Google only gathered small bits of information because its vehicles were on the move and its tracking equipment switched channels five times a second.

The incident has prompted Google to abandon its effort to collect Wi-Fi network data.

In an apparent show of its commitment to privacy, Google also said it would introduce a new option next week that would allow its users to encrypt searches on its website as an added protection against unauthorised snooping.