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Google Defends User Data Policy Despite EU Report

by infomatique | April 8, 2008 at 04:45 pm | 217 views | 1 comment

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) on Monday defended a policy of retaining data on Web users for up to 18 months as necessary to improve search results, responding to an EU report that saw no need for search services to keep personal data beyond six months.

A group of data protection commissioners from across the European Union found that computer Web addresses and cookie monitoring are personal information that search services should do more to protect.

The long-anticipated set of recommendations for how European data protection laws should be applied o Web search services was published on Friday.

The report by the so-called Article 29 Working Party calls for increased user notification and warns Web search services that fail to do so may be unlawful.

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NotPhil

at 17:17 on April 8th, 2008

Whatever happened to their motto, "Don't be evil?"

The search results should be a product of the subjects I type into the engine, not a product of what I've searched for before, and Google knows this.

They don't need to keep personal data for any length of time at all, unless they want to target individuals with specific ads. And, really, that's what this is all about for Google; making money by stripping us of our privacy and coercing us into clicking on ads, instead of just making money by providing an ethical service.