The latest twist in the search-engine wars is revisiting privacy policies. Pressure from the European Commission is behind the latest industry move as Microsoft agreed to rework Bing to discard user data after six months.
Microsoft’s Chief Privacy Strategist Peter Cullen framed the change as an ongoing evaluation of the company’s Internet search privacy practices. That evaluation, he said, led to the change in Microsoft’s data-retention policy that will see the company delete the entire Internet Protocol address associated with search queries at six months.
Microsoft has been deleting the information after 18 months. The software giant lagged behind Google, which cut data-retention times to nine months from 18 months in August 2008. In December 2008, Yahoo announced a data-retention policy that promised to anonymize user log data within 90 days, with limited exceptions for fraud, security and legal obligations.
Accommodating the EU
“This change is the result of a number of factors, including a continuing evaluation of our business needs, the current competitive landscape, and our ongoing dialogue with privacy advocates, consumer groups, and regulators — including the Article 29 Working Party, the group of 27 European national data-protection regulators charged with providing advice to the European Commission, and other European Union institutions on data protection,” Cullen said.
In 2008, EU privacy regulators asked Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to delete user data, including text entered into search-engine boxes and the computer’s IP address and location, after six months. Microsoft moved last year to make searchers’ unique IP addresses anonymous after six months, and with the new announcement Bing becomes the first company to fully cooperate with requests from EU countries.
“Under our current policy, as soon as Microsoft receives a Bing search query we take steps to de-identify the data by separating it from account information that could identify the person who performed…
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