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January 24, 2006
Be careful what you search for...you might actually find it
Tim Wu of the Columbia Law School weighs in with an interesting article about Google's refusal to comply with a government subpoena seeking search histories to aid in the fight against online porn.
The article highlights some interesting facts about Google's storage of search data. First, every search query you enter scrolls across a screen at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. Second, all the search queries are stored in a vast database that Google uses to analyze search patterns. Third, your IP address is linked to each and every one of your searches.
Wu proposes a solution that puts the burden squarely on Google:
...the public's demand must be of Google — not the state. It should be that Google please stop keeping quite so much information attached to our IP addresses; please modify logging practices so that all identifying information is stripped. And please run history's greatest "search and delete," right now, and take out the IP addresses from every file that contains everyone's last five years of searches.
Of course, storing and analyzing all that search data helps Google improve a product that everyone seems to use. The data also generates unique features like Zeitgeist, which ranks the most popular Google searches by week, month and year in 21 different countries...including yours.
Posted by Carlos Roig at January 24, 2006 09:34 PM
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