Google Rebuffs CNet News Over Article

Google Inc. is refusing to speak with reporters at CNet’s online news site after it ran a story that used Google’s chief executive to illustrate how easily the company’s search engine finds personal information.

Google last week told News.com, the online tech news service of CNet Networks Inc., that it would not speak to its reporters for a year, said News.com’s editor.

Google was angered by a story last month that focused on potential threats the search engine posed to personal privacy, said Jai Singh, News.com’s editor in chief.

To demonstrate the point, writer Elinor Mills “googled” CEO Eric E. Schmidt.

In her story, Mills included a link to Schmidt’s home address, his net worth of $1.5 billion and noted that he had attended the Burning Man art festival and was an amateur pilot. Mills said she spent 30 minutes on Google to obtain the information.

“We didn’t go out and break into any databases to get this information,” Singh said. “This is all publicly available information.”

A Google spokesman declined to speak with Associated Press about the story.

The crux of Mills’ story was about the vast amounts of information that Google collected that was unavailable to the public. For example, Google software scans user e-mails to learn what kind of advertising might appeal to the user.

Mills wrote in her story that “hackers, zealous government investigators, or even a Google insider who falls short of the company’s ethics standards could abuse that information.”