In response to an E.U. Article 29 Working Party investigation, Google has changed its data retention policies again. Instead of the 18-24 months that it announced in March as the cut-off for keeping server logs, Google will now anonymize its search server logs after 18 months, according to a post on the Google Blog by Peter Fleischer, Google’s global privacy counsel.
The Working Party raised concerns over the length of time Google kept server data, as well as the length of time it set its cookies to expire. It also questioned the need to keep data or use cookies at all. Fleischer defends Google’s policies, while making concessions with the length of time server data is kept and promising to reconsider Google’s expiration dates on its cookies.
Danny Sullivan has a complete run-down of the convoluted saga at Search Engine Land.