The Channel Wire

July 07, 2008

Last week Viacom won a major decision in its $1 Billion lawsuit with Google that forces the search engine giant to hand over private information about YouTube users. The ruling states that Google must transfer terabytes of data to Viacom that includes user names and IP addresses. Google argued unsuccessfully that the privacy information should not be turned over to Viacom.

The basis for the lawsuit filed by Viacom alleges that the most popular content being posted and viewed on YouTube is material that Viacom owns. The company argued successfully for the information to be turned over in order to track who is posting material and which users are watching what.

The ruling appears to have rattled Google, and the company recently made an addition to its notoriously sparse homepage: Privacy. Any user who uses Google's search engine has been sure to notice the lack of extraneous information on the page. Until this week, there was no mention of privacy. Now, at the bottom of the page, users can click on a link to take them to the Google Privacy Center.

The Google Privacy Center gives a brief overview of the company's policies regarding the Scope, Uses and Choices of personal information.

While it's not much of a change, it does appear that Google realizes that holding as much private information as they do -- often to the chagrin of users -- does pose a risk to people using the search engine and the other services they offer.

But the latest ruling in the Google and Viacom lawsuit does prove that the information Google collects may not be kept within the rampart walls, no matter what the policy may say.