Over the weekend, Germany's federal commissioner for data protection and freedom of information, Peter Schaar, asked Google to let an independent regulator examine one of the hard drives to determine how much data had actually been collected on individuals.

In a blog posting written late Saturday on his official government Web site, Mr. Schaar, who is also a member of the panel that advises the European Commission on privacy and data protection issues, questioned whether Google's collection of the data was a simple oversight, as the company has maintained.

‘‘So everything was a simple oversight, a software error!'' Mr. Schaar wrote. ‘‘The data was collected and stored against the will of the project's managers and other managers at Google. If we follow this logic further, this means: The software was installed and used without being properly tested beforehand. Billions of bits of data were mistakenly collected, without anyone in Google noticing it, including Google's own internal data protection managers, who two weeks ago were defending to us the company's internal data protection practices.''

“I think this is going to damage the company irreparably,” said Simon Davies, the director of Privacy International, a London-based group of privacy advocates from 40 countries. “Three years ago the company was wearing a halo. But over the past year it has moved substantially in the direction of being perceived as Big Brother.”

Kay Oberbeck, a Google spokesman in Hamburg, said the company was in contact with data protection officials in Germany and in the rest of Europe to address their concerns. He disputed the notion that Google was recklessly collecting private information, saying the company’s services were meant to let users control what information is made public.

“This was obviously a mistake, and we are profoundly sorry,” Mr. Oberbeck said. “We take individual privacy very seriously at Google. There was a breakdown in the communication between teams and within teams, and we are investigating this and want to take up the lessons we learn from this to improve our processes and to have instruments installed which are really robust to make this never happen again.”

Google was collecting the data on locations of wireless networks to improve geolocation for mobile devices. Some cellphones can determine their location by scanning for nearby wireless networks and comparing that information to databases like the one Google has compiled.