Google Privacy-Policy Change Faces New Scrutiny in EU

Software giant Oracle said it briefed European regulators late in 2016 on recent changes to Google’s privacy policies in hopes of compounding its rival’s already complicated regulatory challenges. In June, Google asked users to accept a new privacy policy that allowed it to combine their browsing and search data, giving the company more robust profiles of its users. Oracle said it told antitrust regulators that the policy change will make it harder for other companies to compete by enabling Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., to even more accurately target ads to users. Privacy advocates have also complained to US regulators. “‘Super profiles’ now a reality,” reads a headline on one slide of a presentation that Oracle provided to regulators. “Policy change gives Google, exclusive, unprecedented insight into users’ lives.” An EU official confirmed regulators had been briefed by Oracle on the privacy-policychange and said they were taking the allegations “seriously.”