Perhaps he is saying, "The fact of the matter is that we're required to retain and release lots of information. If you don't want that information being passed around, you probably shouldn't give it to us. Sorry, we do the best we can under the circumstances."

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be [googling] it in the first place."

If staying in business and out of the cross-hairs of the DoJ's anti-trust division means you have to play ball with some data retention "requests," then you're probably going to rationalize a million tenuously logical reasons why that's the right thing to do.

When the government sees it hitting their tax take they will listen

When that day comes, insurance companies are going to say, "We'll make it worth your while if you tell us who is googling for 'breast cancer;' 'diabetes;' 'melanoma.'" At some point in the future the major shareholders (think Carl Icahn or some such character) will make it awfully hard to say, "no." Just a more direct way to monetize the data.

As I said elsewhere here, google should, if they don't want to be evil, allow us to opt for a poorer search experience and not keep our data.

And I don't buy your slippery slope argument. Sure, Google could sell your search patterns. And your ISP could sell your browsing habits. And ask.com's AskEraser feature could all be a lie and it too could be selling your queries...

Ultimately if you don't trust Google with your search queries, then you should take Schmidt's advice and not query anything embarrassing.

Agreed. I don't believe in inherent evil. I do believe that certain business structures lead to behavior that some observers would consider "evil" and others would simply call "upholding fiduciary responsibility." But that's a discussion for another thread.

And I don't buy your slippery slope argument.

And I can't make you. But you're a fool if you dismiss it out of hand. The Facebook beacon debacle is a shiny reminder of what can happen if we stand by and let it.

I have no problem with Google's handling of my information at this time. In particular, I'm not worried about embarrassing queries as much as an elderly person you love, for example, being denied insurance coverage (or only given coverage at exorbitant rates) because the company is able to argue "pre-existing condition" (or some other claim of exclusion) from private information.

But if this hoopla is unnerving, wait until people find out how supermarkets sell loyalty card information!

Or take my advice, sidle up to an open WiFi network (or if you are really nefarious, crack a "secure" one--bet that won't get logged), load up a flash-based Linux distro with no means of storing anything permanently, and query till your heart's content. If that's more privacy than you need, how about Private Browsing mode, which is in every major browser now (except IE? dunno.)

Sheesh!--the hue and cry over Google and privacy completely overlooks the fact that the Internet is the most anonymous means of exchanging information ever created. Yes, unfortunately legal and profit motives mean your online activities are, to some extent, recorded. But breaking the link between "you" and what you do online is trivial, and the more your privacy matters to you, the more thoroughly can you achieve that separation.

And retaining for policing/security reasons doesn't mean you should use the data for other privacy-invading targeting.

see the Yahoo leak from cryptomeme http://cryptome.org/isp-spy/yahoo-spy.pdf

Not that you could tell from the article's headline. Either The Register is being sensationalist, or just didn't see it in those terms.

As more practical advice, if you're doing something you don't want others associating with your IP address, use an anonymizer you feel you can trust.

Finally, a reasoned response. I came in here just to say this; Can't believe what an uproar this is causing...

The article links to a story about Google blocking CNET reporters for a year after they used Google search to find details about Schmidt: http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/05/technology/google_cnet/

Really, all this "privacy" nonsense is for the little people, not important folk like Eric Schmidt, anyway.

To be clear, this is a story about Google's press representatives not speaking to CNET reporters -- when I first read it, I thought you meant that Google blocked CNET's IP address. Still a very petty response.

All of these guys are hypocrites; when will you guys realize this? Oh, and that gas-guzzling 767 with the private shower is being used to "create good in places like Africa" (or whatever they had said), right?

I think a lot of people are having a knee-jerk reaction thinking that this guy is giving moral advice. What I see here is just a statement of fact: if you don't want something to ever possibly be known about you, don't put in online.

Readers of this site should know better than the general public that there is always a risk of data getting into the wrong hands. Even if you trust the host. Even if you encrypted the data. etc.