Google's $3 billion (1.5 billion-pound) acquisition of DoubleClick is set to be reviewed by Congress, it has emerged.Congress plans to investigate the impacts of the digital marketing investment deal on consumer privacy, as well as on competition.
In terms of consumer privacy, Google has recently announced that it will cut the amount of time after which cookies will be deleted, reducing it to two years as opposed to the year 2038.
On the move to cut the length of time cookies are stored for, Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel, said: "After listening to feedback from our users and from privacy advocates, we've concluded that it would be a good thing for privacy to significantly shorten the lifetime of our cookies."
Congressional staffers informed Forbes that the hearings will take place later in the year, and the search engine will be hoping to allay any fears over consumer privacy considering its recent declaration on cookies.
Back in April, Sergey Brin, co-founder and president of Google Technology, remarked: "It has been our vision to make Internet advertising better - less intrusive, more effective, and more useful. Together with DoubleClick, Google will make the Internet more efficient for endless users, advertisers and publishers."
