Information Research Weblog

I see that Google's dispute with the US government rumbles on.

It's all a bit daft, really. The government is going to discover nothing from the data that is not already well reported in the literature; they are not going to discover anything about trends, since they are not getting any time-series data; and it all seems for show on their part - trying to prove to the American public that they have their concerns at heart.

Google is being equally daft: although I support their stand, it is equally evident that revealing search terms will say nothing at all about individual users. I support their stand because the next step for government will be to ask for that individual user data!