Gonzales Makes Indecent Proposal To Google

Though privacy has been cited as one reason for Google's battle against a subpoena from Alberto Gonzales and the Justice Department, the other reason, preserving trade secrets, looks like the reason Google has dug in to resist the request. Two leading writers looked at the breaking news about Google and the DOJ battling over requests for search information from Google's databases see a couple of different focal points. InfoWorld's 'Gripe Line' columnist Ed Foster Meanwhile, "From the motion the DOJ filed to force Google to comply with the subpoena: "The subpoena asks Google to produce an electronic file containing '[a]ll URL's that are available to be located through a query on your company's search engine as of July 31 2005." and "all queries that have been entered on your company' search engine between June 1, 2005 and July 31, 2005." HELLO. You think Google is going to give that over? Me no think so. This is why Google originally fought the order. The DOJ then narrowed its request to a random sample of one million URLs and agreed to not ask for personally identifying info on the search queries, but it still wants all search queries for a one week period. No way in hell Google would give that up, given the company's penchant for secrecy. At issue for the DOJ is the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act. The AOL, MSN, and Yahoo have already complied with similar requests, Google's refusal to do so has prompted the court action against it. document.write("Email the author here.") Drag this to your Bookmarks. Add to document.write("Del.icio.us") | Yahoo My Web David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.