Google will be helping the state governments to make reams of hard-to-find public records more accessible to everyone. This could be done by providing free consulting and a number of software. This plan stirs advocates of open government but frets consumer privacy experts.

Google plans to announce Monday that it has already partnered with four states: Arizona, California, Utah and Virginia. The partnership is aimed at removing technical barriers that had shunned its search engine, as well as those of Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc., from accessing tens of thousands of public records that tackle education, health care, real estate, and the environment. These records will not be exclusive to the search engines owned by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.

J.L. Needham, who manages Google's public-sector content partnerships, said at least 70 percent of visitors to government Web sites get there by using commercial search engines. But too often, he said, Web searches do not turn up the information people are looking for simply because government computer systems aren't programmed in a way that allows commercial search engines to access their databases.

Notwithstanding the obvious advantages of the initiative, privacy advocates said they are worried about unintended consequences, cautioning that some records may contain personal and confidential information that should not be widely available.

Clark Kelso, California's chief information officer, said he is concerned about the consumer privacy issues raised by this initiative and he has directed all state agencies to redact Social Security numbers and other confidential information from documents that will now be available online.