Google WiFi privacy row: CEO Schmidt admits screwing up in UK

London, June 4 (ANI): Search engine Google "screwed up" after its Street Cars wrongly mapped every wireless network in Britain to use the information for commercial purposes, Eric Schmidt, its chief executive, has admitted. he Telegraph reports that the company is currently embroiled in an international row over its controversial street car service.

In an interview at Google's London headquarters, Schmidt said the company could have gained access to the personal details of millions of unsuspecting Internet users.

In his most frank statements on the privacy storm that has engulfed the search engine giant, Schmidt, 55, said he could not rule out the possibility that personal data, such as bank account details, was among the data collected by the its controversial 360 degree electronic picture mapping vehicles.

"We screwed up. Let's be very clear about that," Schmidt told the Financial Times.

Now, in a desperate attempt to diffuse the growing row over its latest privacy blunder, Schmidt said officials would begin handing over to the rogue data to European regulators within the next two days.

It will initially hand over the data to German, French and Spanish data protection authorities. It will also publish the results of an external audit into the practice, where the private information it obtained over families' use of the Internet. (ANI)