A federal judge denied a U.S. government request that Google Inc. be ordered to hand over a sample of keywords customers use to search the Internet, but required on Friday that the company produce some Web addresses indexed in its system. In a 21-page ruling, Judge James Ware of the U.S. District for the Northern District of California said the privacy considerations of Google users led him to deny part of the Justice Department's request.
"To the extent the motion seeks an order compelling Google to disclose search queries of its users the motion is denied," Ware wrote.
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had subpoenaed Google to turn over data the government wanted from the company as part of the Bush Administration's attempt to defend a federal law on child pornography on the Internet. "You have to disclose what your robots find, but you don't have to disclose what people search for," Andy Serwin, a privacy law expert, said of the automated software tools Google uses to catalog the Web.
"The order does get the government what it probably needed, not what it wanted," said Serwin, a partner with Foley & Lardner and author of the "Internet Marketing Law Handbook."
