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Interwebs founding father and Google evangelist Vint Cerf has insisted that when you search Google, the company doesn't know who you are.

Thursday morning, at a mini-conference in San Francisco, the always entertaining Cerf sat down with Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg and other tech luminaries to discuss "open" mobile networks. But at one point, the conversation turned to the epic amounts of user data pouring onto Google servers across the globe.

As Mossberg started to complain about Google using Gmail and other sign-in services to tie more and more search data to real live people, Cerf quickly interrupted. "We still don't know who you are," said the Google figurehead.

Mossberg begged to differ, pointing out that as netizens sign-in to their Google accounts in order to use other services, the company also ties those accounts to search data. "When I search Google, you can see - right up at the top of page - that I'm logged in. You can see my Gmail address," he told Cerf. "You know who I am."

But Cerf insisted that even in those situations, Google doesn't know you. "You are somehow conflating things that I think need to be disaggregated," Cerf told Mossberg. "A Gmail identifier doesn't tell us anything. It's just an identifier. We have no other thing to tie that to. It's just an identifier [You said that already. -Ed]. And by the way, you picked it. We didn't."

As ridiculous as that may sound, it's a common Google argument. When a federal court recently asked Google to divulge the identity of an innocent Gmail user - if the account was still active - the company told us that wasn't possible.

"It's...incorrect to say that we are able to disclose somebody's identity," Google told us. "We only have the information associated with the account, and federal law sets limits on what is discoverable." Never mind that when you sign up for Gmail, it asks for your name.

Google won't say whether the user's identity was divulged or not - and neither will the court. But for some reason, we expected a little, shall we say, openness from Vint Cerf.

The net's founding father went on argue that you don't have to be logged in to your Google account to use search. When Mossberg pointed out - once again - that his Gmail address appears at the top of his search page, Cerf said: "If you've logged in because you were using Gmail, the system tells you that you're logged in," he said. "You wouldn't want us to hide that?"

Sitting to Cerf's right, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch piped up to say that users have the option of turning off Google's link between search and services like email. Then he pointed out that it's on by default.

The conference crowd chuckled. And Cerf hit Lynch in the head with something akin to a rolled newspaper.

It was a playful hit. But it was yet another way that Cerf - like his Google overlords - carefully steers clear of acknowledging exactly what personal data the company is collecting.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11...ta_collection/