As a Webmaster I look at Matt Cutts and his blog about things Google

Today Matt caught my eye with this item:

Sigh. Google as a company takes privacy very seriously. I personally feel strongly about protecting our users’ privacy. So I’m frustrated by a recent study that Privacy International did, and I want to know if I’m off-base in my reaction. I got back home from SMX and I’m surfing the web when I see this AP article entitled "Watchdog group slams Google on privacy"

I am a supporter, in the main, of Privacy International. I think they perform a worthwhile role. But they do seem to have fallen down on the job here. They are a political pressure group, but this report does make me feel that they have lost their way, as does the whingeing on their site about Google.

Google has stood up against delivering logs of its queries in any manner, should it be forced to disclose them, that identify an individual. One can criticise Google for several things, but not, I think, for this area of their business.

Under different management I can see how Google's huge databases could be used to identify individuals, and to silence "those who are not with us, and thus against us", and I can spot the danger of one corporation inside the most powerful nation on earth being conscripted by a corrupt government to identify enemies of the state. That is a thing to seek to ensure never happens, but this report is missing the point, surely?