In a statement posted on their corporate blog, Google has claimed victory in their court battle against the Department of Justice. The case was brought forth by the government in an attempt to force Google to hand over large quantities of data regarding search queries and the web sites that are in Google's index.

From the statement:

This is a clear victory for our users and for our company, and Judge Ware's decision regarding search queries is especially important. While privacy was not the most significant legal issue in this case (because the government wasn't asking for personally identifiable information), privacy was perhaps the most significant to our users. As we noted in our briefing to the court, we believe that if the government was permitted to require Google to hand over search queries, that could have undermined confidence that our users have in our ability to keep their information private. Because we resisted the subpoena, the Department of Justice will not receive any search queries and only a small fraction of the URLs it originally requested.

It will be interesting to see how these types of cases move forward in the future. While Google put up a fight over the requested data, other engines including MSN and Yahoo! handed over their own data without much trouble. That may mean that the government will focus future efforts on those engines, though the case could also mean that other engines will now feel comfortable resisting government requests as well.