Marketing Pilgrim

The recent concern surrounding privacy laws is now making waves in Australia.

The European Union announced last week it was investigating whether Google has breached European privacy laws, and now the Australian privacy experts have added their opinion, as reported in the Australian Financial Review:

“Australians using US-based internet search engines are exposing themselves to privacy laws that are routinely bypassed by the US government and opening themselves to invasions of privacy that would never be allowed in other countries”

The issue here, the Aussie experts say, is that US privacy laws are different to Australian ones, and that Google could at any time be forced to give up the information they are holding to the US government. Of course, Google maintains that they have legitimate reasons for collecting information about internet users, but Australians are now being warned that US-based search engines, particularly Google, may be breaching their privacy rights.

Is this affecting the way we use search here in Australia? I’m not yet sure, but the privacy debate is definitely heating up.

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