Google Relents, Will Hand Over European Wi-Fi Data

itwbennett writes "Having previously denied demands from Germany that the company turn over hard drives with data it secretly collected from open wireless networks over the past three years, Google has reversed course. A Google representative said that it will hand over the data to German, French, and Spanish authorities within a matter of days, according to the Financial Times, which first reported this latest development on Wednesday. 'We screwed up. Let's be very clear about that,' Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the newspaper."

Comments

Re:Great

[twidarkling]

HA! Right. If Google hadn't announced they'd collected it, they'd never destroy it. Remember, their entire business model is information. I think you trust in them a little too much if you think they'd just randomly destroy any information that might possibly have value.

My call is they went public with the info because they knew a leak was inevitable, and thought they could save face by being open. They didn't quite count on governments taking an interest so forcefully. That, or they knew governments would, and planned so that they could still end up looking like the good guys, because hey, the big mean government is taking the data, and who knows what THOSE GUYS are going to do with it.

Looks like that option worked on you, so no, they opened the can of worms by collecting it unnecessarily.