GOOGLE is reeling from a PR disaster after its chief executive banned staff from talking to an online newspaper that published his personal details — having found them on Google.

In an article about privacy issues, a CNet.com reporter gave herself 30 minutes to look up Eric Schmidt, Google’s billionaire chief executive. She found the executive’s home address, net worth, stock sales and the name of his wife (Wendy).

After publication, a Google representative contacted CNet complaining of invasion of privacy. CNet was told the search engine would not talk to its journalists for one year.

The news has outraged privacy groups who have long complained that Google cares too little for its users’ personal information.

Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum (WPF), said: “I don’t understand why he thinks he shouldn’t eat his own dog food.”

In May Schmidt told a journalists’ conference: “When we talk about organising all the world’s information, we mean all. And we mean all people. And we mean universally accessible.”

Dixon said the forum had tried to contact Google many times about privacy issues. Recently a man contacted the WPF after his wife had falsely accused him of being a paedophile during a divorce case. His name and photograph were posted on a police website and subsequently removed after the charges were dropped.

But the page remained accessible through Google and was only taken down after a long struggle, according to Dixon.

“As usual, Google was incredibly difficult to deal with,” he said. “Its argument is always that it is published elsewhere. But Google makes these things easier to find. Is Google a problem? Yes. Ironically, Schmidt is right to be concerned.”

When users log on to Google their computer is sent a “cookie”, a small program that tracks all the information they search using the site. The cookies do not expire until 2038.

Privacy advocates are worried by what Google may do with this data in future. Daniel Brandt of Google-Watch.org, a non-profit organisation, said: “This company has become too powerful, too arrogant and too secretive.”

Google was unavailable for comment.

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