Judging the judge's Google leanings

A federal judge this week granted a partial victory to the federal government in its quest to get Google to turn over search results.

U.S. District Judge James Ware said he would likely give the Justice Department access to a portion of Google's index of Web sites, but not to its users' search terms. The Justice Department is looking for the data to help it back its case in a pending trial over an antipornography law.

Google had resisted the subpoena for search data (unlike some of its competitors), saying that the data would not be relevant and that the request would put consumers' privacy at risk.

The case afforded the blogosphere plenty of opportunity for outrage: People were angry with the government, with Google and with the judge.

Blog community response:

"Besides, it's a little strange for Google to be acting all high and mighty about dealing with the American government when they've eagerly climbed into bed with the communist Chinese government."
--the j. botter weblog

"And what a nice spend of taxpayers money to contest this. I can think of better ways to get 5,000 random URLs out of the Google index and 5,000 search requests from other sources."
--Search Engine Watch

"There's no pending criminal case here, just the feds trying to bolster a bad law. Giving the government even a watered-down victory sets a bad precedence for those who care about online privacy."
--TechBlog