Internet giant, Google has come in for sharp criticism from a new study by Scott Cleland of the Precurser Group which charges the firm with utilizing 21 times the bandwidth it actually pays for and thus in the process causing loss of $ 7 billion a year to the tax payers.

The research firm, which claims to be specialising in the converging telecom sector says that the firm is the largest consumer of bandwidth in USA and its usage is on the rise. While Google used 16.5 percent of all US consumer internet traffic, forecast for 2009 estimate it to increase to 25 percent and 37 percent by 2010.

The study says that Google payment to the government for bandwidth is estimated to be $ 344 million which comes out to be 0.8 percent of US consumers flat internet access monthly bills of $ 444 billion.

"Thus, Google'''s 16.5 per cent share of all 2008 US consumer bandwidth usage is about 21 times greater than Google's 0.8 per cent share of US consumer bandwidth costs -- on an implicit about 6.9 billion dollar subsidy of Google by US consumers," said Cleland.

Google has reportedly come down heavily against the study labeling it as being authored by someone who is aided by rival phone companies like AT&T, Verizon and Time Warner.