Google disagrees, insists IP address merely identifies computer location

BRUSSELS, Belgium - IP addresses, a string of numbers that identifies a computer, should generally be regarded as personal information, the head of the European Union's group of data privacy regulators said Monday.
Germany's data protection commissioner Peter Scharr leads the EU group currently preparing a report on how well the privacy policies of Internet search engines operated by Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and others comply with existing EU privacy law.