Google, Yahoo, and the Federal Government

When Yahoo purchased Del.icio.us a few weeks ago, I began to think differently about Yahoo. Before, Yahoo was the old granny on the block. She knew what she was doing, and had lots of experience doing it, but was lacking in innovation. Google was a young lad full of innovation, and that innovation had surpassed Yahoo’s experience long ago.

I thought Yahoo would forever be playing “catch-up” to Google. But by snapping-up top web 2.0 technologies like Del.icio.us and Flickr, Yahoo has me thinking the tides may soon turn.

So is Yahoo Google’s biggest threat yet?

Nope, there’s a bigger one—

Today several news sites are reporting that the federal government has subpoenaed Google for details on what its users have been looking for. From the story on Yahoo News:

The government contends it needs the data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches as part of an effort to revive an Internet child protection law that was struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court on free-speech grounds.

This is a pretty big deal because in addition to the relevancy of it’s search results, Google’s popularity grew so rapidly because it was seen as everyman’s company. People felt safe with Google. Google was the David to the traditional corporate world Goliath. Though over the past couple of years that “safe feeling” has waned, as concerns surfaced about Google’s tracking habits and their non-disclosure about the retention period on the information in the cookies they create.

If the feds strong-arm Google into handing over data about users search habits, this could be a final, massive blow to the reputation Google spent so long building.