Google cuts time it stores data on users' searches

BRUSSELS -- Google Inc. said Tuesday that it is halving the amount of time it keeps users' search details, cutting the time from 18 months to nine to meet European Union privacy demands.

Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy adviser, told reporters the change would apply to Google's sites worldwide. Google introduced an 18-month limit in 2007.

"With the new policy today we will anonymize the IP addresses on our server logs after nine months, so that is a significant improvement in privacy terms and it puts us ahead of the rest of the industry," he said.

Fleischer also announced that changes were being made to Google's "Suggest" application, which offers suggestions for searches in real time. He said Google only logs 2% of data collected on such searches but said they will all be erased after 24 hours, starting later this month.

EU data-protection officials have questioned the need for search engines to keep data on users' searches.

An EU report in April on search engines recommended changes to their practices to meet European data retention and privacy rules.

Fleischer said the changes would "respond to concerns that have been raised by regulators, advocates and even users in general." It said, however, the added privacy given to users would "have costs" for Google's ability to improve search quality and innovation of its services.

Officials at the European Commission, the EU's executive, had no immediate reaction to the announcement.

Google had long argued that its retention period complied with EU data privacy rules, but it moved in 2007 to limit data logged from searches to 18 months.

Competitors Microsoft and Yahoo have also limited the time they retain such data. Microsoft keeps search data for 18 months and Yahoo 13.

Google says the data help its search engine better understand its users so it can deliver more relevant results and advertisements.

Peter Hustinx, the EU's top data-protection supervisor, has also raised concerns that Google's "Street View" map and imaging feature could pose privacy problems when it is launched in Europe.