BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Europe's major consumer group BEUC said Wednesday that it feared Internet search engine Google Inc.'s takeover of online ad tracker DoubleClick Inc. would damage European Union privacy rights and limit consumers' choice of Web content.

Their plea to EU regulators comes after U.S. consumer privacy advocacy groups asked the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to look at how the two companies, when combined, would have access to an unprecedented amount of data on consumers' Web usage and Internet search habits.

Last I checked there was plenty of tools to prevent cookies and such (using a proxy for instance?). To me this sounds like a case of missing information and a need for education of the users. You can reject certain cookies, you can delete them (or even modify them yourself). As far as users not knowing their information would ultimately go to Google with a Double CLick buyout? 90% of them already use google, if they were so worried about them I am not sure you would see such high usage.