EPIC: “Regulators Failed and Google Turned The Internet Into a Surveillance Machine”

In advance of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on "Stacking the Tech: Has Google harmed competition in online advertising?," EPIC argued in a Medium post that the answer to that question is obviously yes, but Congress shares some of the blame. "There are many problems with today's online advertising systems," EPIC wrote, "[b]ut it didn't have to be this way. More active regulation by the government could have sustained online advertising models that were good for advertisers and businesses and for consumers, journalism, and democracy." In 2000, EPIC opposed Doubleclick's acquisition of Abacus. In 2007, EPIC told the FTC that Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick would lead to consumers being tracked and profiled by advertisers across the web.