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Google at loggerheads with U.S. Government

Julian Borger

Washington: In marked contrast to its cooperative approach in China, Google currently finds itself in confrontation with the U.S. Justice Department over the rights of its users.

Alone among the major U.S. search engines, Google last week refused to hand over data on past usage to the Government as evidence in an investigation into child pornography.

Google has cited the privacy of its users, but the Justice Department insists it is not looking for personal details, only for search patterns that would show the effectiveness of anti-porn filters. The Government is trying to prove that minors could stumble on to child porn websites by accident by entering quite innocent search terms.

Yahoo!, Microsoft's MSN and America Online (AOL) have agreed to cooperate, insisting they would not hand over data that identified individual users. However, Google, the market leader, has stood firm.

``Our company relies on having the trust of our users,'' one of Google's founders, Larry Page, told ABC News. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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