With privacy being just about the biggest topic on the web this week, it’s interesting to note that Google is playing around with the idea of launching facial recognition technology. They’re toying with the notion very, very carefully though.

Smile:o)

Eric Schmidt, chief executive with the company has apparently said that “a series of public disputes over privacy issues had caused the management team to review its procedures and the launch of new technologies”. According to Google executives that the Financial Times has spoken too, facial recognition is one of the key topics of internal debate.

Facial recognition has the potential to be the next privacy flashpoint, and you’d think Google could do without dalliances in such subjects considering the wifi debacle revealed earlier this week. However, the company already uses the technology in its Picasa photo sharing service. This lets users tag some of the people in their photos and then searches through other albums to suggest other pictures in which the same faces appear.

Google has though held back on launching the technology more broadly, and as the FT points out, it was not included, for example, in the Google Goggles product, launched last year which allows people to search for something on the internet by taking a picture of it on a mobile phone.

Schmidt’s official word was that facial recognition is a good example of an area they will tread over carefully due to potential questions over privacy. “Anything we did in that area would be highly, highly planned, discussed and reviewed. When you go through these things, you review your management procedures,” he added.

While Google fears falling behind competitors who may be on the way to releasing this sort of technology to the world they are very aware of the fears of privacy campaigners – who claim that adding facial recognition to Goggles would allow users to track strangers through a photograph, making it into an ideal tool for stalkers and identity fraudsters.