• Financial Times, Tuesday, June 12, 2007 10:31 AM

In a rare moment of total compliance, Google agreed to cut the time for which it retains users' personal search information from 18-24 months to 18 months, a concession to the European Union's request for improved user data protection. An EU committee, the Article 29 working company, last month asked the search giant to justify its current policy. That data includes the search term, the address of the Web server and information collected from user tags or "cookies."

The EU worries that search data alone is enough to identify a person, and could be used to create profiles about their political views, religious beliefs and sexual orientation. Google's policy used to be to keep that data indefinitely, but in March, the company said it would limit storage time to two years to alleviate "Big Brother"-like concerns.

The move to cut back further to 18 months may not be enough to appease the EU, but Google in a statement reminded Brussels that Web compliance is something of a global issue. "The Internet is a global medium, and the principles at stake -- privacy, security, innovation and legal obligations to retain data -- have an impact beyond Europe, and...sometimes conflict: while shorter retention periods are good for privacy, longer retention periods are needed for security, innovation and compliance reasons."

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