I spent a little time thinking about the whole AOL research fiasco where they released search records which although the user names were removed could be used to identify people from their search logs.
I however am hoping this fiasco does bring tighter regulation of the search engines. In Germany any flattery of the Nazi party is banned. On Google.de you could however search for “why hitler was great” and see tonnes of neo-nazi results. Search engines are portals to this content.
Television, radio and even newspapers are regulated to control access to this sort of information. Perhaps search engines should too.
A number of the searches I saw on the AOL logs convinced me regulation is and should be coming. Questions about murdering your wife and people searching for perverted pictures of children closely followed by looking for local schools suggest that search engines have a responsibility to understand better what they are making available and to who.
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