The Bush administration's request is part of its campaign to defend the  1998 Child Online Protection Act,which faces a court challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union. Google's compliance with the DOJ subpoena is necessary as per Federal Prosecutor.

 That law restricts the posting on commercial Web sites of sexually explicit material deemed "harmful to minors," unless it's made unavailable to the youngsters. The ACLU argues that Web sites cannot realistically comply with such requirements and that the law violates the right to freedom of speech mandated by the First Amendment.

A divided U.S. Supreme Court in 2004  stopped short of striking down COPA and instead decided that a full trial was needed to determine whether the law is constitutional. Those proceedings are scheduled to begin in Philadelphia in October.

The case against Google began Jan. 18, when the Justice Department asked Ware to order the company to comply with a subpoena issued last August. The subpoena called for a "random sampling" of 1 million Internet addresses accessible through Google's search engine and of 1 million search queries submitted to Google in a one-week period.