Given Google's acknowledged position as an online censor for China, its claim that it's, "committed to protecting your privacy" and to, "supporting an Internet environment that also respects individual privacy," is hard to swallow.

Nonetheless, it says it's joined other "notable U.S. companies calling for federal consumer privacy legislation".

The others are Kodak, eBay, Eli Lilly, Google, Hewitt and Associates, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, Procter & Gamble, Sun and Symantec, as SearchEngineWatch points out, also saying:

"Microsoft bravely took part in the search privacy panel we did at our SES New York show earlier this year (coverage here and here), saying it would welcome better US federal protections on privacy issues. Why? It would let Microsoft and the searchers it serves know exactly what data government agencies could and could not have. Now Microsoft, along with Google and other tech companies, are pushing to make this happen."

Back to Google, on its blog is says:

"Here in the U.S., we have a growing patchwork quilt of state privacy laws, disparate industry-specific privacy laws (for example, different laws covering health-related data, financial data and children's online data), and a similarly-mixed bag of data security laws. This matrix of laws is complex, incomplete, and sometimes contradictory. For consumers, the result is a set of privacy protections that are uneven at best.

"On an Internet beset with spyware, malware, phishing, identity-theft, and other privacy threats, enforcement of privacy protections has become an industry-wide challenge, and highlights the lack of a coherent regulatory structure. Google strongly supports the adoption of a federal consumer privacy law. It would be good for our users, and would contribute to consumer trust on the Internet as a platform for communication, expression, e-commerce, and so forth."

And finally, "Americans care about their privacy, and so does Google. A baseline U.S. federal consumer privacy law will help protect all of us online."

Google and Microsoft in particular should try telling that to some of their Chinese users.

Digg this story.

Also See:
SearchEngineWatch - Microsoft, Google & Others Call For Unified Federal Privacy Protection, June 20, 2006
blog - Calling for federal consumer privacy protection, June 20, 2006