Reports from Europe say the company is deeply unhappy that members of the European Parliament are trying to have privacy issues around the handling of personal information considered by EU competition regulators.
Google maintains privacy and information handling issues are not the purview of competition regulators, and are an entirely separate issue.
The US regulator, the Federal Trade Commission, approved the deal in December after more than six months of consideration.
At that time, Google chairman and chief executive Eric Schmidt said the FTC ruling sent a clear message that the proposed takeover posed no risk to competition.
The company is clearly miffed that some European parliamentarians, together with privacy advocates, are pushing privacy and information handling issues into the competition deliberations.
Reports from Europe say the privacy advocate contend that the volumes of data collected by Google routinely as part of its business gave the company a competitive advantage, and that privacy and competition could not be separated as issues.
After a European Parliament hearing to consider the impact of the internet on personal privacy issues heard from a series of privacy advocates, Google’s global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer went on the attack, according to wire reports.
“People (are) trying to take a privacy case and shoehorn it into a competition law review ... I can understand that people continue to peddle this theory in Europe after having lost in the United States,” Mr Fleischer said.
In its decision, the FTC said in a written opinion that privacy concerns played no role in its merger review.
At the time, Google’s Mr Schmidt acknowledged the FTC opinion, but added that Google was committed to user privacy.
“For us, privacy does not begin or end with our purchase of DoubleClick,” Mr Schmidt said. “We have been protecting our users' privacy since our inception, and will continue to innovate in how we safeguard their information and maintain their trust.”
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