codyhanson.com

Every headline I’ve seen regarding the requests by the DOJ for information on search terms from Google, MSN, AOL and Yahoo has focused on Google’s defiance. None have emphasized the far more significant fact of the other three parties’ compliance.

Frankly, we expect this kind of behavior from MSN. Opacity and user-unfriendliness are Microsoft’s hallmarks, and there’s a strong precedent on their behalf for cooperating with unreasonable requests from governments.

Yahoo, on the other hand, has invested a great deal of time and money over the past year or so reestablishing street cred, and with relatively non-invasive takeovers of Flickr and Del.icio.us, savvy web users have taken note. What has given these services such cache is their openness, their emphasis on community, sharing and respect for users, and with them, Yahoo has taken a big step forward. Turning over data on search terms to the DOJ without a fight is, in my opinion, two steps backward.

I’ve been a user of Yahoo services for many years. I’ve got Yahoo email accounts, I own a number of domain names through Yahoo Small Business, I’m a member of several Yahoo groups, I use Yahoo IM some, and my Del.icio.us and Flickr accounts have been assimilated. As of today, I’m walking away from those email and IM accounts. I’m (reluctantly) going to be looking for substitutes for Flickr and Del.icio.us. I’m more or less locked in to the other Yahoo services, but will not renew them.

It should be noted, as Danny Sullivan has on Search Engine Watch, that turning over this data does not probably constitute a violation of privacy by the search engines. The identity or patterns of individual searchers were not disclosed. What was disclosed was the willingness of MSN, AOL and Yahoo to cave to federal pressure without a fight. I want to patronize companies that will fight for me.

I am in no position to opine on the legal issues surrounding this case, but several things are clear to me. The Department of Justice wanted this data in order to make a case for the renewal of the Children’s Online Protection Act (COPA) by showing the relative ease with which minors can access pornography via the web. Of course the most effective means for determining the extent of minors’ viewing of pr0n would be to collect data on unsupervised web use, or to mine the browser caches and cookies of PCs to which kids have access. Because this data is unobtainable, DOJ is substituting a count of searches for suspicious terms devoid of any context or user age information.

If I got burned by hot fast food coffee, I wouldn’t sue the minimum-wage worker who cranked up the pot’s thermostat too high, or filled the cup too full, or failed to secure the lid. I’d sue the parent company, because they’ve got the billions.

When the government wants information about internet use, whether it makes sense or not, they’re going to go to the search engines, because they’ve got the data.

At this point, I’d like to bring it back to Google. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been reading John Battelle’s The Search. Battelle does a great job of highlighting the tension at Google between the “Don’t be evil” ethos and the incredible power of their near-monopoly on search. He puts this in the context of the USA PATRIOT Act, and now it’s resurfaced in the COPA. This won’t be the last time.

I give Google a great deal of credit for their refusal to comply with this worthless request. I also applaud their recent strong stance against bandwidth carriers’ desire to charge content providers for access, which would mean BellSouth and others would be getting paid on both ends of many data exchanges.

However, let’s not overlook the fact that Google has some skeletons in its own closet. There’s the matter of censorship on its Chinese news portal. They also deserve a little heat for AOL’s actions in the COPA case, seeing as how they now own part of the company. Firms which base their business model on users’ willingness to turn over large portions of their online lives must be active stewards of that data. Anything less will be bad for business.