Meanwhile, Company Remains at Loggerheads With Us Government

In marked contrast to its cooperative approach in China, Google currently finds itself in confrontation with the US justice department over the rights of its users.

Alone among the major US search engines, Google last week refused to hand over data on past usage to the government as evidence in an investigation into child pornography.

Google has cited the privacy of its users, but the justice department insists it is not looking for personal details, only for search patterns that would show the effectiveness of anti-porn filters. The government is trying to prove that minors could stumble on to child porn websites by accident by entering quite innocent search terms. Its lawyers say that for its case to be tested, it needs a sample of actual searches.

Yahoo!, Microsoft’s MSN and America Online (AOL) have agreed to cooperate, insisting they would not hand over data that identified individual users. However, Google, the market leader, has stood firm.

"Our company relies on having the trust of our users," one of Google’s founders, Larry Page, told ABC News. "That’s a very strong motivation for us ... I think instead we should have laws that protect the privacy of data, for example, from government requests and other kinds of requests."

Privacy advocates worry that the data the government is asking for could lead to further subpoenas if it pointed to any suspicious behavior by search engine users.

Last week, the justice department asked for a court subpoena to force Google to comply, and nervousness about the case took a toll on the company’s share price, bringing it down 14% in the space of last week.