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The London-based group released a report on Saturday entitled 'A Race to the Bottom - Privacy Ranking of Internet Service Companies'. It details a handful of specific concerns, but the main threat Privacy International spells out is Google's growing size and scope as the world's largest provider of Web searches, along with the consumer data that the company collects as it delivers ever more personalised Web services.

'This is in part due to the diversity and specificity of Google's product range and the ability of the company to share extracted data between these tools, and in part it is due to Google's market dominance and the sheer size of its user base,' the report finds.

The rankings were arrived at after a six-month probe of privacy practices at key Web search companies, email providers, and e-commerce and social networking sites. Privacy International promised to issue a fuller report in September, after further consultation with the companies involved.

With each search on Google, the company gathers information about a customer's tastes, interests and beliefs that could potentially be used by third parties such as advertisers. But the company says it never passes on personal data and that the report is mistaken.

'We are disappointed with Privacy International's report, which is based on numerous inaccuracies and misunderstandings about our services,' Nicole

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Wong, associate general counsel at Mountain View, California-based Google said in a statement.

'We stand by our record for protecting user privacy and offering products that are transparent about what information is collected and empower users to control their personal information,' she said.

The substance of the accusations against Google are that the company's privacy policy disclosures are incomplete and 'possibly deceptive' and that Google has a poor history of responding to consumer complaints. Also it occasionally does not accept public input before introducing services.

'Throughout our research we have found numerous deficiencies and hostilities in Google's approach to privacy that go well beyond those of other organisations,' the report states.

'While a number of companies share some of these negative elements, none comes close to achieving status as an endemic threat to privacy,' the report says in reference to Google.

But none of the score of sites studied gets a complete clean bill of health.

Facebook and Hi5, two social networking websites, were rated as 'substantial threats' to consumer privacy for alleged poor handling of consumer personal information.

Similarly low-rated are Apple and AOL, which are criticised for failing to do more, given their size.

Microsoft is criticised for 'serious lapses,' not so much for recent products as for its 'terrible' prior track record.

Other Internet properties fare better as 'generally privacy aware but in need of improvement.' These include BBC.com, auction site eBay and online music site Last.fm, which is to be acquired by CBS.

In 2004, Privacy International called on European Union regulators to set limits on Google's free email service Gmail, which targets relevant advertising at users based on a machine reading of the contents of a consumer's email.