"When you search on Google, we collect information about your search, such as the query itself, IP addresses and cookie details," says the official Google blog. It certainly collects enough information to indetify you, and quite possibly to hang you (depending on the punishment strategies of your local jurisdiction).
Google doesn't have to collect this information, but it does, so if you put sufficient value on your privacy, you have to figure out how to protect it on Google and other search engines.
However, even Google has now come to recognise that it isn't necessarily to keep all these records forever. The blog says:
Today we're pleased to report a change in our privacy policy: Unless we're legally required to retain log data for longer, we will anonymize our server logs after a limited period of time. When we implement this policy change in the coming months, we will continue to keep server log data (so that we can improve Google's services and protect them from security and other abuses)--but will make this data much more anonymous, so that it can no longer be identified with individual users, after 18-24 months.
Thankyou, Google: that represents a very welcome advance.
However, 18-24 months still sounds far too long to me. Frankly I don't believe that two years' personal data delivers any significant benefit for users over three months. But of course, I'm not allowed to know.
Yeah, I know: if it bothers you, you can always stop using Google. There are at least a few search engines that don't retain any user data at all, such as Scroogle (a "Google scraper"), ixquick and Clusty. Is anybody going to switch? Thought not. Why give up real and immediate short-term benefits to avoid a potential and possibly unreal long-term risk?
Would you switch to Yahoo or Windows Live Search if either of those pledged not to retain data for more than three months?
