Google Has the Goods

Talk about overreaching. I'm surprised this isn't absolutely everywhere (maybe it's such an audacious power grab that people aren't taking it seriously), but the Justice Department is going after Google. Google hasn't done anything wrong, but the Justice Department just wants some information, ostensibly to help it get a better understanding of the Children's Online Protection Act.

What does Google have that can help the attorney general? How about its entire database of searchable URLs? And to get a rough idea of how Google is used, maybe all the queries that were entered into Google during June and July 2005. That's right, every single one. Google first tried to negotiate with the government, and the Justice Department lowered its request to a random sample of a million indexed URLs and all the queries for a week. Google's still fighting.

The Justice Department made clear that it didn't want any personal information about anyone who made the queries, but Google said that it would be too difficult to separate it out. (Which demonstrates that Google has such information, so be careful what you search for.) But next time the attorney general calls, he may not be so interested in stripping that info out of the request. Search Engine Watch has a summary of the arguments, as well as links to PDFs of the documents (the Justice Department motion and Google responses). Search Engine Watch also has a related post on the story in which they report AOL, Yahoo, and MSN received similar subpoenas and apparently complied, turning over the requested info. So be really careful what you search for on those services.