Driven by pressure from groups advocating online privacy, Internet giant Google will cut in half the length of  time it keeps complete log file information on all searches performed using its leading Web search engine before rendering them anonymous, from 18 months to nine months, a company official said Monday. The shortening of Google's data retention period would be its second such move since the Mountain View, California-based company abandoned a policy of keeping search query data indefinitely, slicing in half a March 2007 plan to keep such data intact for 18 months. Google gave no details on when the new policy would take effect. Google Says Changes Significant In Addressing Regulatory Concerns By halving the amount of time it retains a complete record of personal data recorded from Web searches on its search engine, Google hoped to improve its privacy policies, the company said Tuesday. "Today, we're announcing a new logs retention policy: we'll anonymize IP [Internet Protocol] addresses on our server logs after nine months," Google global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer wrote in a joint message announcing the change posted on the company's official blog and public privacy blog, co-written by company senior privacy counsel Jane Horvath and software engineer Alma Whitten. "We're significantly shortening our previous 18-month retention policy to address regulatory concerns," Fleischer added in the Tuesday message. Speaking to a group of reporters in Brussels Fleischer said the move was a major one for Google. "That's a significant improvement in privacy terms, and it puts us ahead of the rest of the industry," Fleischer said. Yahoo, he said, keeps its search engine log file information for 13 months, and noted that Microsoft retains the information from its search engine for 18 months. As part of Google's March 2007 move to begin scrambling its search log files after 18 months, a process it calls anonymization, portions of each IP address were moved around in such a way as to make reconstructing the original number difficult. Some privacy advocates have expressed concern that such methods may not go far enough in ensuring personal data is completely disassociated with the logs Google and other search engines keep indefinitely. Google Change To Nine Month Retention Will Apply Worldwide Google also filed a response (.PDF file) to a European Union group of regulators, a 20-page document titled "Google Response to the Article 29 Working Party Opinion On Data Protection Issues Related to Search Engines," attributed to Fleischer. In the response Google said that keeping search log files complete with IP addresses helps it provide better services to consumers. "Examining an IP address usually tells us which ISP [Internet Service Provider] that person is using," Fleischer wrote in the response. The response was prompted by a letter questioning Google's retention  practices sent by the advisory body, European Union's Article 29 Working Body. Google said it expects the new nine month retention policy, which will apply to all of its search sites worldwide, will satisfy regulators. "We trust that the level of detail concerning the purposes for which Google may process its users’ personal data set out throughout the different components of the Google Privacy Center will meet the expectations of the Article 29 Working Party," Fleischer noted in the response. When it implemented its 18 month retention policy last year, regulators almost immediately pushed for a further reduction of the period Google and other search engine firms keep full log files. "When we began anonymizing after 18 months, we knew it meant sacrifices in future innovations," Fleischer wrote in the Tuesday announcement. Some Privacy Groups Seek Six Month Retention Period "We believed further reducing the period before anonymizing would degrade the utility of the data too much and outweigh the incremental privacy benefit for users," Fleischer added. "After months of work our engineers developed methods for preserving more of the data's utility while also anonymizing IP addresses sooner," he added, without disclosing details of the methods. Some European regulators have urged Google and other search engine firms to implement a six month limit on retaining complete search log files, such as an advisory body at the European Commission that called for the change in a paper issued earlier this year. Google said Tuesday that "the routine server log data we collect has always been a critical ingredient of innovation," and that it uses such data to help "make improvements to search quality, improve security, fight fraud and reduce spam." Google was concerned about possible ramifications that it said could come with shorter search log retention periods. "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," Fleischer wrote in the Tuesday announcement. In March a study conducted for The New York Times by Web traffic research firm comScore showed Yahoo properties with the potential to gather the most user data of any Web firm, some 400 billion total "data transmission events" during the month that was studied, with Time Warner-AOL second with roughly 100 billion events, followed by Google with 91 billion events. Google To Slice Existing 18 Month Data Retention Period In Half The results of that study showed that firms such as Google, Time Warner Network's AOL, Facebook, eBay and Amazon were using greater interconnectedness among their groups of Web properties to learn more than ever before about the lives of consumers based on how they use the Internet. “When you start to get into the details, it’s scarier than you might suspect,”  Marc Rotenberg, the Electronic Privacy Center's executive director, told the Times in a March article. "We’re recording preferences, hopes, worries and fears," added the privacy rights organization's Rotenberg. Online privacy advocates have raised concerns over the growing amount of personal Internet usage data available to large online media firms, perhaps more than ever led by Google. Last June Google received the lowest possible rating for privacy practices, according to a detailed report by Privacy International, a global organization working for privacy protection. At the time Google was the only company of 22 tested to receive the report’s only “black” color-coded rating, a category Privacy International gives to companies which do “comprehensive consumer surveillance and [have] entrenched hostility to privacy.” With the changes announced Tuesday Google was hopeful regulators would be satisfied with its efforts to retain complete search query data for half as long as its previous policy. "We trust that the Working Party will welcome these significant steps," Fleischer wrote in the response. Related Links:
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10:25 pm on Sep. 9, 2008 (utc 0)