Looking for Porn in All the Wrong Places (Revisited)

Just to sum up the case: the Department of Justice asked the four biggest search engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL, to turn over records regarding a certain amount of searches performed on their respective domains. The feds said they basically needed such records in their ongoing measures to protect children from harmful online content (especially porn). The latter 3 acquiesced, G didn’t. So the DoJ took the Googleheads to court, seeking to force them to comply with its federal order via subpoena.I speculated (in my previous entry) that Googlewould lose in the case, and it did. It must now submit the necessary data to the feds. But not as much data as the feds were seeking. It seems that Google’s initial concerns, namely regarding it’s patrons’ rights to privacy and its own right to keep its books private, were taken into account by the judge. I’d also predicted earlier that G’s reticence to divulge the required information would put them in well with porn surfers who highly value their privacy. The reason being that those surfers could rest assured that the search giant was doing everything in its power to protect their collective privacy. But I think I misjudged that placement of trust.According to the latest judgment, the privacy issue may be out of Google’s hands, no matter what measures it’s trying to take to protect its patrons. If the federal government can just walk in anytime it wants to demanding the results of online queries from major search portals, and get its wish, it’s going to instill a bit of mistrust in Google, as well as its biggest competitors (on the part of the I-hope-to-run-for-office-someday-and-I-don’t-want-this-information-used-against-me individual, for example). And G is not even at fault here because it did the best it could under the circumstances. To reiterate, the DoJ wasn’t awarded all that they were asking for in terms of user searches. But in the end , the casual surfer just looking for a little afternoon porn because he’s bored at work just might decide to go to a smaller, more inconspicuous engine in looking for his favorite niche. After all, if you’re not seeking that structured a query, you can search for smut in many places. There are always going to be people searching for it, and if they can do so without putting themselves at risk in this “War Against Pornography” climate, even better.Bottomline, Google - along with Yahoo, AOL, and MSN - loses a few porn-minded visitors; maybe only for the short-term, maybe forever. In the meantime, the smaller portals and directories pick those visitors up, and they can compete a little more with the big boys. And if that’s the worst that comes out of this situation, the Bush administration might’ve just done small online businesses (in this case, search engines) a favor. I ask you, is that so bad?