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Judge Rules Google Will Not Be Fully Searched

In a late Friday ruling, which is not subject to appeal, Judge James Ware of U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif. said Google would have to turn over the log of 50,000 URLs to the Department of Justice, but not any of the data on 5,000 search queries the DoJ requested. Although government experts have repeatedly declared the information they collect is for research purposes and will not be used to pursue individuals, Lauren Gelman, associate director of Stanford Law School`s Center for Internet and Society called the Google/DoJ case "a wake up call to anyone that uses Google, or any of the other search services. People are now seeing that there is a record being created any time they do anything online".

In Google`s battle, the question was how much the search giant would have to concede at all in its battle with the Department of Justice over search query data. As it turned out, very little. A DoJ subpoena to Google sought an index of millions of URLs and a week`s worth of search data. Friday`s ruling said Google would have to turn over the log of 50,000 URLs but not any of the search query data the government had sought. A similar request was made to America Online, Yahoo and Microsoft (MSN), all of which complied. Google could rightly declare victory even before the judge issued his ruling, following a hearing last week in the case. Google was quick to comment on the decision in its own blog where Nicole Wong, associate general counsel for the company, said Google intended to fully comply with the Judge`s order.

In the wake of Google`s challenge, those companies have emphasized they turned over search terms and other records but not individual`s private data. In his ruling, Judge Ware criticized the government for describing the methodology it would use for a study that would categorize URLs in Google`s search index, but not detailing how it would evaulate the effectiveness of filtering software. "The Government does not even provide this rudimentary level of general detail as to what it intends to do with the sample of URLs to evaluate the effectiveness of filtering software," Judge Ware wrote in his decision.