An American judge said yesterday that Google should hand over some of its internet records to the US Justice Department, but expressed reservations about requiring the company to divulge its most sensitive data – the requests that people enter into its search engine.

After a 90-minute hearing, US District Judge James Ware said he intends to order the search engine company to provide the Justice Department with at least some of the information it sought as part of the Bush administration’s effort to revive a law meant to shield children from online pornography.

However, Mr Ware said he didn’t want to create the perception that search engines could become tools for government surveillance and said he was "particularly concerned" about the Justice Department’s demand for a random sample of search requests.

Instead, Google could be required to supply the Government with a random list of websites indexed by the company. Mr Ware said he would issue a written ruling quickly.

A Justice Department spokesman, Charles Miller, said that the agency looks forward to the ruling. "We hope his opinion will demonstrate the Government’s belief that this information would be helpful in protecting the nation’s youth against potentially harmful material," he said.

During the hearing, Google lawyers argued that the Government could get virtually all the information it wanted from publicly accessible services such as Alexa.com and Dogpile.com, which monitor search requests.

T. Barton Carter, a communications and law professor at Boston University, said that privacy campaigners should be heartened by Mr Ware’s comments, but cautioned against reading too much into the judge’s comments until his written order.

"What’s going to be important is whether he limits the information [given to the government] and whether he explains why he drew the line where he did," Mr Carter said.

Investors seemed encouraged by Tuesday’s developments as Google’s recently slumping stock price surged $14.10, or 4.2 per cent, to close at $351.16 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Yesterday was the first time that Google and the Justice Department have met in court following a government subpoena issued nearly seven months ago.

The Justice Department initially requested a breakdown of search requests and website addresses from Google for a study that the Government believes will prove that filtering software doesn’t prevent children from viewing sexually explicit material on the internet.

Google refused to hand over the information, even as three other major search engines turned over some of the requested data. The company maintained that the Government’s request would intrude on its users’ privacy and its trade secrets.

Google’s protests prompted the Government to scale back its requests dramatically. Joel McElvain, the Justice Department lawyer, told the court yesterday that the Government now wants a random sampling of 50,000 website addresses indexed by Google and the text of 5,000 random search requests.

Mr McElvain said that just 10,000 of the websites and 1,000 of the search requests would be used in a study for a Pennsylvania case centring on an online child pornography law that has been blocked by the US Supreme Court. That case is scheduled to go to trial on October 23.

The Justice Department plans to use the search requests to show how easy it is for online pornographers to fool internet filters, hoping that it will help demonstrate the need for a tougher law to protect children from the material.

The Government’s scaled-back requests have minimised Google’s concerns about sharing confidential company information, but the company said it is still concerned by privacy issues.

Although the Government doesn’t want Google to turn over anything that would identify a person making a search request, Albert Gidari, a lawyer for Google, said that the content of certain queries often contains sensitive information about finances, Social Security numbers and sexual preferences.

Mr Gidari said that an order requiring it to surrender people’s search requests would have a "chilling effect" on the internet.

Steve Mansfield, chief executive of a recently launched search engine called PreFound.com, said the entire industry will get a lift if the court prevents the government from getting a glimpse at Google’s search requests.

"This entire case has become about public perception," Mr Mansfield said. "If people perceive that what they are putting into a search engine isn’t private, that’s going to be a big negative for everyone."

Pressed by the judge, Mr McElvain acknowledged the Justice Department had already obtained enough information from other search engines to conduct its study. "But the study would be improved with Google’s data," he said.

Yahoo!, Microsoft’s MSN and AOL have handed over some search engine information to the Justice Department. All three companies said they complied with the government subpoena without compromising their users’ privacy.

The Government will have to reimburse Google for whatever costs the company incurs. Google has estimated it will take its engineers five to eight days to extract the data requested by the Justice Department.

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