U.K. Politician Picks Fight with Google

There's just something about the British, it seems; they really don't trust Google (GOOG). First, the company's Street View service was met with outraged complaints that Google had posted embarrassing and potentially dangerous photographs of private citizens on its site, and the country's information commissioner almost killed the project altogether. Now, David Davis, a Conservative member of Parliament and former home secretary in the party's shadow cabinet, has written an extraordinary denunciation of Google for the Times of London.

The genesis of Davis' diatribe was rumors that the Conservative Party, dismayed by the National Health Service's inadequate handling of patient medical records, was considering allowing patients to let Google archive and organize those records instead. In a piece titled "I wouldn't trust Google with my personal info," Davis writes that the company's history of collaboration with China, arrogant attitude toward privacy concerns, and sheer size and power make it unsuitable for handling something as sensitive as medical records.

Indeed, the piece fairly stings with disdain. Worried that Google could mine the most private of personal data and sell it to advertising companies, Davis writes that the search giant has simply failed to win his trust over the years. "It was the prospect of huge profits that pushed Google into its amoral deal with China and drove its high- handed approach to the intrusion on people's privacy with Streetview," he writes. "These profits also explain its cavalier approach to European legislation (which it claims does not apply to it)."

It might sound odd for a Tory to be so worried about excessive profit-taking, and indeed Davis goes out of his way to insist that he's got no problem with people making money. But there comes a time, he concludes, when we must limit our trust in all-powerful private entities, and Google's record disqualifies it from such a critical responsibility.

"The financial 'masters of the universe' were allowed to be too big to challenge, and too big to fail," Davis ends. "Only three years ago, they were "cool." Now they cripple our economy with their incompetence.