Published: 2006-01-19
The court papers detail Google's refusal to reveal data, including all searches made on Google in any one-week period, and 1 million random URLs. Counsel for Google has vowed to fight the government in order to preserve trade secrets and the privacy of its users, according to The Mercury News.
The government is seeking the information prior to bringing the Child Online Protection Act back into the spotlight, after it was struck down two years ago for being too expansive. The new argument posed by government lawyers is that the Act would be more effective than software filters in protecting minors from porn.
The government also claims that other unnamed search engines have agreed to the requests -- however with Google being the search engine of choice for almost half of US searches, without the search giant's participation the government may have to do its own research on the matter.
Posted by: Peter Laborge
