Mar 15th, 2007
Google Search Data to be Anonymized
Google announced yesterday that they will be anonymizing the data they receive from searches after a period of 18-24 months. Right now, they are able to track all search data right back to the very IP address that it came from. They will still have that data for two years, but after that, they will disassociate the searches with IP addresses etc so that they will no longer be able to track which search came from where.
I’m sure that one of the reasons Google is doing this is because of the terrible AOL slip up that happened not too long ago. For those who didn’t hear about this, an employee in AOL leaked search information that allowed the public to track the information back to the individuals who performed the search. Obviously this was a terrible privacy breech and scared a lot of people out of using search. I’m sure there are other reasons as well, but I believe Google is taking these measures to safeguard themselves against such a disaster.