With all search engine – online mail providers – it’s six of one – half a dozen of the other. Any of them at any time will have the ability to give up any and all information acquired about their users. Rule of thumb – never use these emails for anything you don’t want to see in public. Any searching you do – know that it can go public at any time. Period.

And as SarahK noted – they haven’t handed out info in China – merely censored data on searches… at least until they found out that they were going to get bad press on that – then they just shut it down. I guess the thought process was… After all what’s a little censorship among good business friends… right? What possible harm could come from that?

How much goes on behind the scenes that we don’t know about? It’s anyone’s guess. Personally I don’t trust them – I used multiple engines when searching for things – to see what comes up where. It’s interesting to note the differences.