"Dear Mr. Schmidt, You may be aware that Privacy International yesterday published its first privacy ranking of leading companies operating on the Internet. Google Inc performed very poorly, scoring lowest among the other major companies that we surveyed."

This is a beginning of an open letter sent by Privacy International's Director Simon Davies to the Google's CEO Mr. Eric Schmidt.Privacy International is a London based human rights group formed in 1990 as a watchdog on surveillance and privacy invasions by governments and corporations alike.

Privacy International released a report on Saturday where Google has ranked at the bottom of the list containing 22 companies. According to Privacy International, other companies have problems with their privacy practices, however none of the 22 companies sunk to the Google's level.Google has certainly made a message that Privacy International's report was based on numerous inaccuracies and misunderstandings about Google's services.

According to Privacy International "Google has embarked on a smear campaign within the media to discredit both PI and the report".Well, research methodologies are not always 100% accurate. Even if we assume and agree on that Privacy International has no interest in placing Google at the bottom of the list, there is a chance that the survey had some inaccuracies and misunderstandings.

However, Privacy International is not alone. An independent European panel is already inquiring into Google's policies to make sure they conform to Europe's privacy rules. Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick Inc. has already alerted a number of consumer groups in the USA and the nation's regulators are under pressure to make Google change some of its privacy policies.

If you carefully think about the amount of data that Google gathers, matches and analyzes, it may sound fair to put the search giant at the bottom of the list. In my opinion no other company has such powerful facilities to collect, match and analyze the user data than Google has.

Deciding if this is good or bad is up to you. If the data collected will be used to improve the service and overall user experience, I have nothing against. If users won't benefit, that's another story.