Heads roll at AOL

I'm sure no one's surprised to hear that someone has lost their job at AOL over the search record debacle .  Let loose the search records of 600,000 customers without properly anonymizing the data and there's bound to be some repercussions.  I think my favorite headline so far is "Reason for leaving last job: Violated the privacy of 600,000 company customers".  That would definitely sum up the situation of the poor drone who released the database.  I feel bad for him and his boss, who were fired for their transgressions, but I feel a little less sympathy for their CTO, Maureen Govern, whose resignation probably involved some financial compensation, at least if it's like the few resignations I've seen.

I'm hoping that the other search engine companies will sit up and take notice.  Google has already proven that they understand the value of their search records, but what are some of the other search engines (or at least the people who manage them) take from this experience?  Will players like MSN and Yahoo take this as a warning not to let a similar incident happen to them or is some sales director in the organization see this as an indication that the information is worth selling?  Given that Time Warner's stock has taken a slight hit, I'm hoping any wild ideas inside these companies will be quashed before they can see the light of day.