Google Blinks Again on Privacy, More to Come

Posted by: Heather Green on September 09

After Congress stepped up its inquiry of how Internet companies collect data for ad targeting, Jules Jules Polonetsky, AOL’s privacy officer predicted that we would see companies scrambling to pacify legislators.

Google’s decision to cut in half the amount of time it holds anonomyized search data is a direct result of that scrutiny, along with the investigations by the EU and probably the U.S. Justice Department’s inquiry (reported by the WSJ). It comes after other privacy changes they’ve made.

Update: Twofer today. Google also says it’s anonymizing data collected from Google Suggest, the feature used to suggest search terms in Google Search, Chrome, and the Google Toolbar.

When I spoke with Polonetsky last month, some of the examples he gave of the other changes that companies could do included:

—Letting people see the data being collected by ad tracking services. Google for instance in July rolled out a feature that lets people see how search results are customized, using data such as past searches and IP addresses.

—Look at retention policies for other kinds of data that they collect, much as they are limiting how long they hold the search data. It could be the registration data folks provide when they sign up for a service, the data collected on their email usage, the information that companies collect as they track which Web sites people visit, which ads they click on, and what ads they view.

—Give people more browser controls over cookies. For instance, one thing the Center for Democracy and Technology advocates is having cookies that record when you opt out of any targeting but that can’t be deleted.

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