The company said on Friday that it is currently reaching out to regulators in the relevant countries, which include the United States, Germany, France, Brazil and Hong Kong in China, about how to dispose of the data, which Google said it never used.

"It's now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protected) WiFi networks," Google Senior VP of Engineering and Research Alan Eustace said in a post on Google's official blog on Friday.

For Google, whose Internet search engine handles more than two-thirds of all web searches in the U.S., the snafu could mark an embarrassing blow to its reputation as a trusted custodian of consumers' personal information.

More: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64D60E20100515