Coming to this from my perspective of a librarian, this is not really getting at the point. The issue is not whether Google or the police skirted the procedural requirements of the law. The issue is that Google has and retains this information in the first place. Google, by its nature, does not place a value on user privacy. If it did, this information would not be available to the police for the asking.
The predictable protest here is that, well, the person did (allegedly) commit a crime and that Google is doing good by helping the law bring the (alleged) criminal to justice. Setting aside whether searching for a particular address is anything more than circumstantial (and, in fact, setting aside the circumstances of the particular case in general) the question is – when the police come calling for you, do you want Google giving up your details?
And if you are indifferent to the concerns of the police coming after you, because you haven’t committed a crime, there are plenty of articles on BoingBoing and other sites that should make it clear this is a cold bit of comfort.
