Google Appears to Lose to Justice Dept.

According to this Associated Press story (reg. req’d), U.S. District Judge James Ware indicated that he is going to order Google to comply with at least part of the Bush admin’s request to turn over search records.

Yahoo!, AOL and MSN previously voluntarily complied to varying degrees with the same government requests. If the Bush administration were not in fact Big Brother, this ruling might not be such a concern. But given the administration’s track record (i.e., domestic spying and lying about it), there may be some fallout for search engines, if people "grok" the implications.

According to a recent University of Connecticut survey, most Americans disapprove of the government gaining access to search engine user behavior. And 51% of respondents said that they were not confident that their search behaviors would remain private in the future.

While this won’t affect basic search user behaviors (e.g., "iPod," "indian restaurants, Manhattan") it may significantly affect plans like GDrive that have major privacy implications.

_____

Here’s the WSJ (sub req’d) story.

eMarketer reports (via MediaPost) that consumers are "extremely" concerned about online privacy.