Google v/s US DOJ: Google Will Lose
No, I’m not a lawyer, but you don’t need to be one to see that Google has set itself up to lose in next Tuesday’s hearings on why Google failed to comply with a Department of Justice subpoena of a week’s worth of search requests.
Google is making pathetic excuses in what appears to be a childish tantrum against the US Government request. Google’s excuses is exposure to private end-user information, which is not what the US wants, and that trade secrets would be exposed, which I think the Government is keenly interested in protecting.
From the AP here:
U.S., Google Set to Face Off in Court By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer
SAN FRANCISCO – Lawyers for the Justice Department and Google are expected to elaborate on their opposing views in a San Jose hearing scheduled Tuesday before U.S. District Court Judge James Ware.
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.
The government believes the requested information will help bolster its arguments in another case in Pennsylvania, where the Bush administration hopes to revive a law designed to make it more difficult for children to see online pornography.
Google has refused to cooperate, maintaining that the government’s demand threatens its users’ privacy as well as its own closely guarded trade secrets.
The Justice Department has downplayed Google’s concerns, arguing it doesn’t want any personal information nor any data that would undermine the company’s thriving business.
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.
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.
Even as it defies the Bush administration, Google recently bowed to the demands of China’s Communist government by agreeing to censor its search results in that country so it would have better access to the world’s fastest growing Internet market. Google’s China capitulation has been harshly criticized by some of the same people cheering the company’s resistance to the Justice Department subpoena.
What is really at stake here is whether or not children are exposed to pornographic materials on the Internet. Google thinks it is all about them, and in their moral smugness, have decided that they do not have to do what the US Government has required them to do in a court of law.
It appears that Google wants to be defiant of the US Government on principle only, which may explain why they seem to flaunt the SEC rules regarding corporate disclosure too, as happened last week when they “accidentally” posted projected earnings on the Internet.
