Considering Google gets 140+ million unique visitors, that's less than 0.0064% of all users? Color me unimpressed. Now if you told me personal information was being offered WITHOUT a court order, then I'd be more concerned.
While I can certainly concede 140M might be low, I think we might also be talking about different things. I'm talking about unique people, not page hits or sessions or cookies, and 140 million was a good enough estimate to make my point: The number of subpoena requests is dwarfed by the immensity of Google's user base.
I think your math is off. The 140+ million unique visitors are world wide. Wouldn't these ~9,000 requests be coming from and directed to people in the US?
Why would that limitation exist? There are all sorts of reasons federal agencies would get court orders to look at international information held by a US company.
A lot can be done with such vast amounts of information. Don't you remember the AOL search data fiasco? Or how the Netflix ratings data can strongly correlate to one's lifestyle choices? Both of those data sets were "anonymized" before release -- just think of the damage data directly attached to a person could do to them.
It's common to see news stories about dumb criminals who were targeted for more thorough investigation, leading to their eventual conviction, due to their Internet search history (e.g. "How much antifreeze does it take to kill an adult" and "how to mask the taste of antifreeze in food")
I'm just going to have to google that now. I really hope that I won't have anybody die near me in the near future by drinking anti-freeze because I'll surely be in the docket defending myself.
I think it's important to note that these people weren't targeted as a result of their search history, they were already targeted, and the search history was just used as evidence for further action.
So me searching for "how much antifreeze..." wouldn't ever be noticed, unless i was _already_ under suspicion that met legal standards for a warrant, so that search data was requested.
Of course, but circumstantial evidence like search history is often used to narrow a field of suspects down to a single candidate for thorough investigation. At that point, they're going to investigate you as exhaustively as it takes to make the case. Without those circumstantial clues to focus the investigation, the authorities are at a significant disadvantage.
