Google boss dismisses privacy concerns

In an interview with CNBC, Schmidt said that users who have done nothing wrong have nothing to fear and confirmed that Google was retaining customer information that could be accessed by the government.

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place," he said.

“If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines - including Google - do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.”

Schmidt showed a certain amount of chutzpah with his comments, in light of his decision to ban CNet from Google events after the news site published information about him that it had found solely on Google’s search engine.

His comments come after a privacy storm engulfed Yahoo after leaked documents showed the search engine was selling access to user accounts to law enforcement agencies.

Costs range from US$20 for an individual's basic subscriber records, to $80 for groups.