Google Says "Access Denied" to White House Search Request

Google Inc. has reportedly denied access to the information US government has been seeking from it as a part of its investigation into online pornography.

The government requested a list of all terms searched for on the site between June 1 and July 31 last year, plus a random selection of a million websites contained within Google’s index.

Google has been denying the request saying, it was too broad and threatened trade secrets.

"Google is not a party to this lawsuit and their demand for information overreaches", Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel for Google, said in a comment to CNN.

Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., which operate the next most-used search engines behind Google, confirmed that they had complied with similar government subpoenas. America Online said it didn’t fully comply with the subpoena but did provide a list of search requests already publicly available from other sources.

Ashok Ramani, Google’s lawyer, replied in a letter to the White House that the internet giant - whose corporate motto is "Don’t be evil" - would not hand over its records.

"Google’s acceding to the request would suggest that it is willing to reveal information about those who use its services. This is not a perception that Google can accept."

He added that the subpoena also threatened to expose some of Google’s "crown-jewel trade secrets". Google is concerned that its requests could be used to deduce the size of its index and how many computers it uses. "This information would be highly valuable to competitors or miscreants seeking to harm Google’s business," Mr Ramani wrote.