• Police in South Korea raided Google’s office in Seoul to obtain data regarding StreetView as part of its investigation into whether Google unlawfully has taken and stored personal wireless data. From late last year until May, Google Korea reportedly dispatched cars topped with cameras to cruise around the country to photograph neighborhoods before the planned introduction of Street View. The police suspect that those cars might have illegally captured and stored personal data from wireless networks while they were mapping streets, a statement by the Cyber Terror Response Center of the Korean National Police Agency said. Google has stated that the collection of personal data had been unintentional and that it will cooperate with the investigation.
  • According to the Wall Street Journal, Google has developed a confidential, seven-page “vision statement” on how far should it go in profiting from the data it maintains about people’s Internet activities. The document was compiled in late 2008 by Aitan Weinberg, now a senior product manager for Internet-based advertising. Until recently, Google had refrained from using most of the data it captured about users for profit-generation purposes, but the emergence of competitors that do track and sell this data is apparently causing Google to rethink its position. Roughly 75 percent of global Internet users, or 943.8 million people, used Google services in June 2010, more than any other Web company.