Exploring Privacy Discussions: Search Engines And Government Control

At the center of the square off over the access to private personal data online -- a much publicized debate that extends from Beijing to Washington -- stands an uncertain arbiter: the search engine. The companies that operate the most popular search engines -- Google, Yahoo and Microsoft -- are making decisions about how the information they collect about user behavior should be protected, in some cases from the eyes of governments that want to take a closer look but lack a clear legal right to do so.

"Search engines are the future of [that] debate," says Timothy Wu, a Columbia Law School professor specializing in telecommunications law, copyright, and international trade. "Questions about policy ultimately are going to be handled by search engines -- whether we live in a more or less government-controlled country."

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