In the case the german regulator is dealing with the ip address is not be considered exclusive of the rest of a data set. The question is given a commercially valuable dataset which contains ip addresses what is sufficient to anonymize the users while maintaining the value of the data. The regulator has one view, which is probably wrong and search engine company (google is the one that is quoted) has another which is also probably wrong.
First of all, this is not about the German data protection agency but about the EU Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. Secondly, there is no need to flail around wondering what is the meaning of this one choice quote that an Associated Press reporter built their story around. The EU publishes its position on its website: <http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/dv/opinion_0 4-2007_personal_data_/Opinion_04-2007_personal_data_en.pdf> Peter Schaar is the Chairman of the group which produced this document. Note that this came out in April of last year. The meeting that the reporter attended was a public seminar discussing various case studies. There is no transcript of the meeting and no formal submission from Peter Schaar or the German data protection agency so I assume that the reported comments came during some discussion of Google's submission which is here: <http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/dv/google_pr ivacy_booklet_pfleischer_/Google_Privacy_booklet_PFleischer_en.pdf> If you want to see the program for the meeting, it is here: <http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/dv/programme _rev2_0/programme_rev2_0EN.pdf> It would be interesting to see some INFORMED discussion on the EU's position or Google's position, because the EU and Google are powerful organizations which matter. But there is really no point in prolonged discussion of some reporter's choice quote which may or may not have been taken out of context. --Michael Dillon