Verbatim: Search firms surveyed on privacy | CNET News.com

Verbatim: Search firms surveyed on privacy | CNET News.com:

Google spokesman Steve Langdon

"Given a list of search terms, can you produce a list of people who searched for that term, identified by IP address and/or cookie value?
Langdon: Yes. We can associate search terms with IP addresses and cookies, but not with users' names unless they are registered with Google.

Have you ever been asked by an attorney in a civil suit to produce such a list of people? A prosecutor in a criminal case?
Langdon: We do not share information about that. (Editor's note: Google did acknowledge, however, that it has had legal requests for Gmail e-mail.)

Given an IP address or cookie value, can you produce a list of the terms searched by the user of that IP address or cookie value?
Langdon: Yes.

Have you ever been asked by an attorney in a civil suit to produce such a list of search terms? A prosecutor in a criminal case?
Langdon: We do not share information about that.

Do you ever purge these data, or set an expiration date of, for instance, two years or five years?
Langdon: We keep data for as long as it is useful. There are several uses, several of which are described in our privacy policy and FAQ. There isn't a specified period."