Amid growing scrutiny from government regulators in the U.S and Europe, Google is amending its privacy practices and keeping the IP addresses of consumers who do searches on Google for a shorter period of time. The dominant search engine will keep server log data for only nine months now instead of 18 (which itself was a reduction put in place last year from an indefinite retention period). It will also start anonymizing the data it collects from its Google Suggest feature within 24 hours. (This is a growing trend—last month, Google made it easier to opt out of ad tracking). As Google grows bigger and reaches deeper into the online lives of nearly everybody who uses the Web, concerns about whether it is becoming Big Brother will also increase.
Google (and the rest of the Internet industry) is policing itself in the hopes of staving off formal government encroachment into its business practices. The last thing Google wants is for the government to start telling it what its data retention policies should be. But it does so reluctantly. In the blog post explaining the new privacy policy, Google says:
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. As the period prior to anonymization gets shorter, the added privacy benefits are less significant and the utility lost from the data grows. So, it’s difficult to find the perfect equilibrium between privacy on the one hand, and other factors, such as innovation and security, on the other.
Google’s growing dominance is raising not only privacy concerns, but also anti-trust concerns. The WSJ reported yesterday that the Department of Justice is considering taking antitrust action against Google in relation to its proposed search advertising deal with Yahoo. The DOJ has “secretly hired” former Walt Disney vice chairman Sanford Litvack, who once headed up antitrust division at the DOJ, to lead any eventual court challenge.
Good thing there is an escape clause in the Yahoo deal that lets Google out of it to avoid antitrust litigation.
(Photo by Jon Hurd).
first !
Yesterday I read that the German government issued a warning against Chrome. http://www.google.com/search?r.....ins+chrome
Here is the Valley Wag piece:
http://valleywag.com/5046665/g.....gle-chrome
German government at its best. As critical as I am towards the Google and its privacy practices, this seems like a decoy intended distract attention from the fact that the German state itself is an eminent threat to its people’s privacy.
Yes, and the difference to Google is that I’m not enforced to hand out Google my data.
Very interesting that they are still after’em.
http://ryanagraves.com/09/03/2.....f-service/
This is good news! However, 9 months is still a long time in this age.
Cool news
Guess DOJ is changing the point of the barrel from MS to Google … sometimes its scary, powerhouse like Google with that mammoth infrastructure will literally dominate a very critical aspect of the internet … The Search
Very Interesting
Let’s not fool ourselves: Google knows everything and could predict the outcome of the upcoming election with utmost accuracy.
As Mr. McNealy stated years ago: “You have no privacy. Get over it.”
So what does this really mean? Once the IP address is gone, does Google still group all a users queries into a bundle and retain an “anonymous” profile? I recall that AOL tried to anonomize queries by simply stripping info like IP but people could still be identified by query patterns.
Also, with respect to Chrome — at the end of the day, does Google obtain more information about a user if they use Chrome than if they use Firefox or IE? My guess is yes but I’ve not seen a definitive answer.
Apparently the memory of the Internet is about 2 years.
Nobody seems to remember this…
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22google+vpn%22
Talk about privacy concerns…
Back to logs:
Log file retention concerns are trivial by comparison to the unfettered access to endpoint analytic techniques on the wire. All the DPI vendors working with ISP know this as well.
Besides, data reduction to an anonymous one way hash gives all the personalization and learning benefits without the pesky threat of business disruption due to LEA involvement.
Come on folks… assume for a moment that history is longer than a 12 months cycle.
Well, if Cuil can do it can’t see why GOOG can’t.
http://www.lagusempoi.blogspot.com
best songs
http://www.amirul-hakimi.blogspot
we share
“Let’s not fool ourselves: Google knows everything and could predict the outcome of the upcoming election with utmost accuracy.”
That´s only correct. Wait pronouncement of google´s headmaster.
hmm…
lagusempoi.blogspot.com
hangat psal isu murtad
This quote for me sums the company up..
“As the period prior to anonymization gets shorter, the added privacy benefits are less significant and the utility lost from the data grows. So, it’s difficult to find the perfect equilibrium between privacy on the one hand, and other factors, such as innovation and security, on the other.”
Nice economist-speak…Being the open minded empiricists that they are, they will be quite happy to produce a paper, publish it in a journal, and demonstrate the ’subpoptimal’ state of their search..
Google… do no evil?
We should all just drop it because if you want to keep growing, you’re going to have to step on some toes.
Android can’t come out soon enough.
Computer Sale http://www.pcsuperstation.com