I don't think the outcome of the battle matters at all in this case. Google is still putting up a fight. Their track record shows that they do at least tell us what is happening, so "it's not our fault, we want to tell you, they won't let us" is consistent with their actions, AFAIK.

> Google is still putting up a fight. Their track record shows that they do at least tell us what is happening

If they wanted to fight, they'd just publish the info instead of asking some court before doing anything.

Then again, it's doubtful whether anyone would believe them at this point if they published anything and claimed the information was complete.

Isn't that illegal?

The cynic in me notes that the companies were spurred into action by the leak. Google has always showed some interest in providing transparency about government requests, but even they were not taking the US government to court over it.

The companies involved are taking these actions because the leak may have undermined consumer trust (eg. small drops in activity) in them. Perhaps even wrongly, if PRISM isn't as widespread as the initial leak suggested.

Google doesn't tell us what they are doing with our data.

It's not your data once you've submitted it to a Google-run service. The expense of all the services Google provides without monetary compensation is the data they can collect. You trade that to them when you use the site: that's their fee.

Firstly I was responding to the parent who said that Google tells us what they do with our data. Whether you think of it as ours or theirs, they don't tell us what they do with it.

Secondly, if what you say is true, then we should stop complaining about what Google passes it to the government - what business is it of ours what they do with their data?

Thirdly, I doubt that anyone seriously believes that the 'fee' for using GMail is that their messages become Google's property.

It doesn't necessarily convert to their property from an intellectual property POV, but it is "Google's data" in the sense that you contractually allowed them to utilize it as described in the ToS and privacy policies, which one is free to reject or accept.

You know the old saying, "If you're not paying for a service, you're the product." Why expect anything else? Google is a for-profit company and it's an expensive thing to run. They deserve something for the services provided, don't they?

In other words it's nothing at all like a fee, as you described it earlier.

But, if things are as you say, Google can do whatever it likes with the data according to the ToS. If people don't like data about them being given to the Government, or used for any other undisclosed purpose, they shouldn't have used Google.

It sounds like a fee to me. That is the price that Google asks for admission to its services -- access to the data that you transfer whilst using Google services. Monetary fees are also contractually specified. I'm not sure why you think that just because the "fee" is non-monetary that you have to transfer all ownership rights in whole, instead of those defined as the price of entry in the contracts agreed to upon account registration.

When you pay a fee, you don't have any rights to limit what's done with the money after you've handed it over.