Kenders' Musings

That title caught your attention, no doubt, and while I raised a question that is certainly framed in an inflammatory way, the real question here is did I ask a question that should be dissected and placed up for an inspection of what it means to be "anti-American".

Google is certainly not against the American way, which is find a great business model and make scads of money from it. They excel in doing just that. As a search engine they are the hallmark of efficient and far reaching, and if one knows how to search correctly, Google is capable of finding the most obscure document, quote or smattering of information one may need. Google is the bloggers best friend.

That being said, Google has garnered a well earned reputation for leaning rather leftward, refusing certain advertisments, (as is their right) that don't mesh with their business leaders wishes. Now, they have decided to fight the governments attempt at procuring a weeks worth of search engine queries. (story linked in title)

Why?

Good question. The governments request is, according to the requesting agency, in this case the Justice Department, to aid in bringing back a law regarding child porn which was struck down as unconstitutional, but opponents fear the data could be used to justify further requests for more detailed information at a later date.

So far, companies that have complied hae done so with only the broadest information, such as search engine queries and the number of times they were used, and left out identifying information, such as IP addresses.

Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft Corp. and America Online Inc. have all complied, and in fact, several times every year all of these companies, even Google, release private information at the request of authorities for legal purposes, and their privacy statements state that they may do that....even without telling affected users that they have done so.

Only Google is fighting this current attempt by the government to access information.

Given Googles well earned liberal bias, and the current administrations NSA programs that monitor certain communications with those that may not hold our countries best interests at heart, coupled with the fact that Google is refusing to release this information, one has to wonder if my title is fitting after all.