Does this mean the content of Google searches now will be sent directly to the U.S. gov't and state gov'ts? It seems like the kind of privacy intrusion that would concern everyday people.
doesn't seem like it.
It's a very specific date range to help build the case. The article was very clear about this.
Antitrust cases are rare, so even if they did do inappropriate things, it would only happen every antitrust investigation.
Plus, these data are already given to NSA in total and large chunks to law enforcement.
Privacy is dead. Everyday people are not concerned about privacy. They don't care that someone will potentially see their "How do I cook a hotdog" search.
Anonymization is partly a result of aggregation, but also I can't see how and PII is relevant to the case here.
But it is also true that Google and ATT are very different companies. The Snowden leaks lead Google to encrypt internal links, once they realized NSA were tapping them; ATT built NSA Room 641A.
But this is rather more complicated than that; I'd bet money there are are people employed at Google who wear more than one hat[1], as there have been at tech companies throughout the history of Silicon Valley. And practices at Google makes NSA's life easier - Organizing the World's Advertising Targets is actually a remarkably compatible goal.
There is no reason to think this isn't still going on.
Now some more bureaucrats and sys admins can take a peek too.