Google to face off with feds in court over your search data

[Cannikin]

SAN FRANCISCO - The Bush administration will renew its effort to find out what people have been looking for on Google Inc.'s Internet-leading search engine, continuing a legal showdown over how much of the Web's vast databases should be shared with the government.

It will mark the first time the Justice Department and Google have sparred in court since the government subpoenaed the Mountain-View, Calif.-based company last summer in an effort to obtain a long list of search requests and Web site addresses.

Google has refused to cooperate, maintaining that the government's demand threatens its users' privacy as well as its own closely guarded trade secrets.

Google seized on the case to underscore its commitment to privacy rights and differentiate itself from the Internet's other major search engines — Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and Time Warner Inc.'s America Online. All three say they complied with the Justice Department's request without revealing their users' personal information. (MSNBC.com content is distributed by MSN. MSNBC itself is a Microsoft - NBC joint venture.)

Cooperating with the government "is a slippery slope and it's a path we shouldn't go down," Google co-founder Sergey Brin told industry analysts earlier this month.

Rest of the story:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11812701/