A news website which "googled" Google’s chief executive claims to have been blacklisted by the internet search engine.

Eric Schmidt appears to have taken umbrage after Elinor Mills, a journalist for News.com, used information available through the Google website to prepare a profile of him.

Using the search engine for just 30 minutes, Ms Mills was able to discover Mr Schmidt’s home address and an estimate of his personal fortune.

She also learned that he had attended the Burning Man art festival and is an amateur pilot as well as news stories outlining estimates of how much Mr Schmidt has made through Google share options.

News.com said the article had been written to highlight the potential threat to privacy posed by large internet companies.

However, after the story was published, Google, which has adopted the motto "don't be evil", told News.com that it would not speak to any of its reporters for a year, according to News.com.

The news website said: "Google representatives have instituted a policy of not talking with CNET News.com reporters until July 2006 in response to privacy issues."

"We didn’t go out and break into any databases to get this information," Jai Singh, the News.com editor in chief.

"This is all publicly available information," he added.

News.com subsequently included a correction in the article, stating that the original version had incorrectly implied that Google Desktop Search can track what's stored on a user's PC.

"The service does not expose a user's content to Google or anyone else without the user's explicit permission," it said.

In common with other search engines, Google keeps records of searches and the websites visited through its search engine.

Google in the UK said: "I'm afraid that we are declining to comment". Google's US office did not immediately respond.

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