Month: January 2006

Remember this whole goat rodeo (on the size of indexes)? Remember how slippery both Yahoo and Google got when we tried to figure out exactly how many documents were in their indexes? Well, turns out, that’s pretty much what the DOJ is trying to do as well. Hence, Google’s defense on a “trade secrets” basis.

Apparently, the subpoena originally asked for a lot more than just a million addresses, as reported Thursday. From the motion the DOJ filed to force Google to comply with the subpoena:



“The subpoena asks Google to produce an electronic file containing ‘[a]ll URL’s that rea available to be located through a query on your company’s search engine as of July 31 2005.”

As we move our data to the servers at Amazon.com, Hotmail.com,

Yahoo.com, and Gmail.com, we are making an implicit bargain, one

that the public at large is either entirely content with, or, more likely,

one that most have not taken much to heart.

That bargain is this: we trust you to not do evil things with our

information. We trust that you will keep it secure, free from unlaw-

ful government or private search and seizure, and under our control

at all times. We understand that you might use our data in aggregate

to provide us better and more useful services, but we trust that you

will not identify individuals personally through our data, nor use

our personal data in a manner that would violate our own sense of

privacy and freedom.