Google’s Privacy Responsibilities at Home and Abroad

The Bush administration’s subpoena to the major Internet search engine companies, Google, America Online, Microsoft and Yahoo! came to the attention of the general public in January of this year. The reason it came to light is that while America Online, Microsoft and Yahoo! had complied with the subpoena to provide lists of indexed URLs and search query terms of their users, Google had resisted. In a subsequent District Court hearing in March 2006 Google was compelled to provide a list of 50,000 randomly selected URLs from its indexes, but the Bush administration’s request for user search queries was denied. During the same week that the headlines were full of the Bush versus Google case, Google China was launched amidst a maelstrom of controversy over their acquiescence to heavy censorship regulations. It seemed that Google’s ‘Don’t be evil’ mission statement was being put under considerable strain. The two news stories during that week in January raise important questions about how the Internet is being governed and what the appropriate interventions should be in order to maintain its integrity as an open, safe and democratic public space. This article is about the values, beliefs and expectations that people have about the Internet and how they are currently under threat.