Google limits data retention in compromise with EU

By Eric Auchard

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc. is scaling back how long it keeps personally identifiable data accumulated from its Web users, seeking to mollify a European Union watchdog that has questioned its privacy policies.

The world's top provider of Web search services said late on Monday that it is ready to curtail the time it stores user data to a year-and-a-half, the low end of an 18 to 24 month period it had originally proposed to regulators in March.

But Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel said in a letter addressed to the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party in Brussels that any regulatory requirement to keep data for less than 18 months would undermine Google's services.

"After considering the Working Party's concerns, we are announcing a new policy: to anonymize our search server logs after 18 months, rather than the previously established period of 18 to 24 months," he said in the letter dated June 10. The server logs refer to software that stores Web search histories.

"We believe that we can still address our legitimate interests in security, innovation and anti-fraud efforts with this shorter period," Fleischer added.

Google is seeking to ease the concerns of regulators in Europe and the United States, as well as a small, but vocal, chorus of privacy activists, who see the scope of Google's Web services as posing unprecedented threats to consumer privacy.

Each time a Google user searches the Web, the company gathers information about that customer's tastes, interests and beliefs that could potentially be used by third parties such as advertisers. Google shares general user statistics but is adamant it never shares personal data outside the company.

The European Union body, made up of national protection supervisors of the bloc's 27 member states, said in May that Google seemed to be failing to respect EU privacy rules and asked for clarification before its next meeting in mid-June.