Perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, and definitely feeling pressure from European regulators, Google on Tuesday announced it is halving the time it retains user search data before anonymizing it, from 18 months to nine months.
In April of this year, the European Commission body known as the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party published a paper (.PDF) recommending, among other things, a six month data retention policy for search engine companies.
In June of 2007, Google had announced a cut from a maximum of 24 months to 18 months, after Article 29 wrote to them expressing concern over that data retention time.
In a blog post, Google announced the new policy, and noted that it was sending a response (.PDF) from Peter Fleischer, their Global Privacy Counsel, to European regulators regarding the above mentioned Article 29 paper.
Interestingly, one of the first things noted in the response is the link to Google's privacy policy which was added in July of this year; however, it's unclear if they really made that move in response to Article 29 or in response to California's requests (as indicated in my prior post). Either way, at least it was done.
But while Google announces a shorter data retention length, newcomers such as Cuil retain no data at all. Fleischer also noted all the kinks aren't worked out yet.
We haven't sorted out all of the implementation details, but we have committed to making it work. We are of course committed to continuing an on-going discussion with the Working Party, as we are able to refine the technical implementation details.
And finally, it's clear that even though they didn't cut the retention length to the six months Article 29 wanted, even this cut was done reluctantly:
While we're glad that this will bring some additional improvement in privacy, we're also concerned about the potential loss of security, quality, and innovation that may result from having less data.
Hey, how about my security? After all, a shorter --- or no --- data retention time would ensure users wouldn't have to worry about their data being sent to companies like Viacom, in the event of legal action.
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