Google Privacy

Google has captured a big market in the the search engine industry. I bet everyone does searches on Google at least 10 times each day. That is why they are the number one search engine and the reason that their stock has gone through the roof.

When we do a search on Google, the search terms we use, our IP addresses and cookie details are all being collected and stored in Google’s data centers. Initially, Google was never going to erase or delete that information because they felt it might prove useful someday.

However, privacy concerns are everywhere these days. So, Google announced a change in their privacy policies, which might, or might not be good news to some. The server logs that contain our information will be “anonymizied” after a certain time frame, but they will continue to keep the server logs to improve Google’s services and prevent computer related misuses. These data can no longer be identified with the individual users after 18 to 24 months.

This initiative is part of Google’s attempt at being transparent and it would be nice if the other search engines would adopt a similar policy.