How long should Google remember searches?

Date added: 21/6/2007

The Article 29 Working Party, an advisory panel composed of representatives from all of the E.U.'s national data protection authorities, has sent us a letter in response to our commitment to anonymize server logs. In it, they're asking us to provide further information about our new policy, and to explain why we feel that the time period of 18 to 24 months is “proportionate” under European data protection principles. For some time, we've discussed many things with the Working Party, ranging from issues raised by Google products like Gmail and Google Desktop to industry-wide concerns, such as the challenges of protecting privacy in the Web 2.0 era. We’re pleased that this most recent letter from the Working Party acknowledges our ongoing engagement with the data protection community and, in particular, our "readiness to consult with it [the Working Party] in contrast with a relative lack of engagement by some of the other leading players in the search engine community”.

In the spirit of transparency, we're publishing our response to the Working Party's letter. The Internet is a global medium, and the principles at stake -- privacy, security, innovation and legal obligations to retain data -- have an impact beyond Europe, and outside of the realm of privacy. These principles sometimes conflict: while shorter retention periods are good for privacy, longer retention periods are needed for security, innovation and compliance reasons. We believe we’ve struck a reasonable balance between these various factors. Our policies are consistent with EU data protection laws, which acknowledge the need to set data retention periods that are proportionate and that enable companies like Google to comply with legal requirements.

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