The fact that Google might be slightly less sinister than other web giants hardly qualifies them for status as tragic victims of an unfair persecution campaign. Yes, they're the most visible. Hopefully, sustained attacks on their unethical policies will make the others softer targets in turn.

First, Google brought itself to the attention of the EU and others by announcing its intended time frame. This makes it natural to target them first. Chastising the Work Party for not addressing Yahoo and Microsoft is like chastising the hunter for shooting the deer that walks in front of him, rather than the other two hiding in the bushes. Now that the issue has been brought up, I'm sure the Work Party is also sending inquiries to other search engines to see what their policies are.

Second, Danny Sullivan's point about Google account holder privacy is irrelevant to this issue. There are two excellent reasons the Work Party would not be concerned with the information retention policies for Google account holders. For one thing, it can be argued that by signing in and storing email, documents, etc., on Google servers, a certain level of privacy is given up already. Someone who saves email, personalizes their search page, or keeps their appointments on Google expects Google to preserve their data. Which leads to the closely related point that for account holders, Google's retention of search data can be seen as a service. Account holders not only abandon a certain level of privacy, they expect information to be kept on demand and presented for their consumption. As an example, look at the personalized ads in Gmail, which use history and email content to present theoretically relevant links.

For Google, the incentive to provide the various "free" services is user information, which is useful to Google in refining its search algorithm and other services.

(Please note, the use of hunting as an analogy does not mean I advocate it.)

When I read that bit about Google being the worst privacy offender last week, I immediately thought of their stand against the pro-COPA people who subpoenaed them for search queries - and how they were alone among search engines in this. "Am I missing something?" I wondered.

I guess I wasn't. Thanks for clearing that up.