• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, July 7, 2008

Now that it's facing a genuine privacy crisis, Google has decided to quell a completely insignificant privacy dust-up. The search giant has finally placed a link to its privacy policy on the home page. Previously, users had to click on multiple links, or search on the terms "Google privacy policy," to reach the information.

This purely cosmetic change might placate some watchdogs, who argued that Google was violating California law by not including the link on its home page, but does nothing to solve the larger problem: Google stores too much information about its users.

Among other data, the company retains logs showing users' IP addresses and their search queries. Google contends that IP addresses don't usually reveal people's identities. But that assertion ignores the reality that examining all of a person's searches can in itself reveal identity. In other words, users' identities can be deduced whether the IP address is real or a made-up sequence of numbers -- as long as it's paired with all of the searches originating from a single computer.

Last week, a federal judge ordered Google to disclose to Viacom complete user logs for YouTube, including all users' IP addresses, screen names and which videos they watched. Google and Viacom have since tried to quell privacy concerns, with Google saying it will ask to "anonymize" IP addresses, even though that won't necessarily preserve users' privacy as long as all of their information is still paired with the same identifier. Viacom has also said it will handle all information confidentially.

As privacy advocates point out, Google wouldn't be facing this problem now if it hadn't compiled and stored these records in the first place.

Louis Stanton, the federal judge who issued the order in the YouTube lawsuit, wrote in his opinion that Google argues in its public policy blog that IP addresses aren't necessarily personally identifiable. "We have proposed broad global privacy standards, and are strong supporters of the idea that data protection laws should apply to any data that could identify you. The reality is though that in most cases, an IP address without additional information cannot," the blog states.

But, on other sections of its site, Google equates IP addresses with personally identifiable information. "Due to user privacy concerns, Google Analytics doesn't report on personally identifiable information, including a visitor's IP address," the company states on a site about Google's analytics tool.

In other words, even Google realizes that, for all practical purposes, IP addresses should be treated as personally identifiable information. Given the events of last week, the company should rethink the wisdom of retaining such data.