The current investigations by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over Google’s alleged breach of laws regarding harvesting consumer information are undeniably significant. Google has been seeing a lot of back and forth from several public interest groups like the FTC regarding its Street View project.  Right now, Google is diligently attending to all those groups, as they bring their cases against Google.

“In May, the FCC received a complaint from Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy advocacy group, asking it to investigate whether Google violated federal communications law designed to prevent electronic eavesdropping. Intentional violations of the law could result in fines of up to $50,000 for each violation.

“Regulators around the world and several U.S. state attorneys general are also investigating Google’s possible privacy breach. The regulators are looking into whether Google street-mapping teams collected and stored passwords, emails and other personal information collected from unprotected wireless Internet networks around the world.”

While Google has been cleared in most cases in the United States, there are other suits that await the search giant in Europe. UK officials, in particular, are cracking down on possible breaches committed by Google. Several other countries like Spain, Germany and France, were alarmed by Google’s data-collection methods, and are now conducting their own investigations.

In other news, Google seemed to be passing on it lessons regarding privacy to Facebook. This is evident in the way Google responded to Facebook’s new-found way to contravene the former’s reciprocity policy, with its “Trap my contacts now”.

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