In an effort to protect users of its Google.cn Web site, Google is moving search records out of China and into the U.S., a company executive said this week...

...The company has decided to store search records from the site outside of the country in order to prevent China's government from being able to access the data without Google's consent, said Peter Norvig, Google's director of research, speaking Monday at a panel discussion at Santa Clara University. "We didn't want to be in the position of having to hand over these kinds of records to the government," he said.

Google retains information on the search queries performed by its users, along with the IP (Internet Protocol) addresses associated with queries, to better understand how its search engine is being used, Norvig said.