The South Korean police raided the offices of Google Korea on Tuesday as part of an investigation into whether the company illegally collected and stored personal wireless data.
The US search and advertising titan is already facing lawsuits and investigations in several countries in connection with private wireless data collected by its 'Street View' cars.
Street View, which was first launched in 2006, allows users to view panoramic street scenes on Google Maps and take a virtual walk through cities.
From late last year until May, Google Korea dispatched cars topped with cameras to cruise around South Korea to photo neighbourhoods ahead of the launch of Street Views service in the country this year.
Police suspect those cars may have illegally captured and stored personal data from wireless networks while they were mapping streets, the cyber terror response centre of the Korean national police agency said.
"We will investigate Google Korea officials and scrutinise the data we confiscated today" to see whether company has violated the country's laws on privacy, it said. "We intend to find out what kinds of data they have collected and how much. We will try to retrieve all the data illegally collected and stored through domestic Wi-Fi networks from the Google headquarters."
Google previously said that the collection of personal wireless data in other countries was unintentional and a blunder, and that the company would cooperate with investigations.
Google has had a hard time in South Korea's Internet market, which is dominated by a couple of domestic search engines including Daum which already runs a popular service akin to the Street View.
Invading privacy
Last year, Google Korea dispatched cars topped with cameras to cruise around S Korea to photo neighbourhoods ahead of the launch of Street View service in the country this year. Police suspect those cars may have illegally captured and stored personal data from wireless networks while they were mapping streets
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