28 June 2007
This week Google has announced that they would consider keeping a user's search data for longer than 18 months if they had explicitly consented, one of the firm's key executives has said. The web giant currently anonymises a user's search history after 18 months.
There are concerns among some privacy advocates, however, that Google could know too much about a user's web history.
It seems as though Google has prepared for this though, with Marissa Mayer, vice-president of search, saying that Google would look at letting users opt in to having their search data held for longer.
Currently, Google offers an opt-in personalised search facility, which learns how and what users search for in order to improve the accuracy of results.
Marissa Mayer comments:
Our goal is to have a Google search as fast as a light beam to and from our data centres from your location”. We have declared that we keep our records of searches for 18 months. We think that this was a good compromise and also something which benefited our users.
Keep up to date with industry and Nomensa news by signing up to Nomensa newsletters.
