Google Wrestles With EU Privacy Discussion
Privacy considerations for Internet users suffer from a lack of a global standard, leaving it to companies to try and figure out what they should be doing.Google wants to handle the privacy question as well as it can, the company noted in the wake of a recent discussion held in Brussels. The answers to that [...]
UK “How To” Searches Focus On CVs
We used to keep a pretty close eye on Google’s Zeitgeist; somehow, Hot Trends just isn’t the same. But Hitwise UK’s Heather Hopkins has constructed a Zeitgeist-like list of “how to” searches, and this is definitely worth checking out. Hopkins begins by noting that there are differences between US and UK search habits. For example, [...]
Google’s Privacy Counsel Campaigns Against Ties
Peter Fleischer serves as Google’s global privacy counsel, but he may also have had a role in writing the dress code. At any rate, the man apparently loathes ties – he wrote a letter to the Financial Times saying as much. I enjoyed Fleischer’s mini-rant, so here, courtesy of the Times, is the bulk of [...]
Google Crunches Its Cookies Faster
Ongoing privacy concerns have pressured Google into announcing a change with the cookies they use to remember a user’s preferences.Over the rest of 2007, Google’s servers will start issuing new cookies to visiting browsers. Instead of their current 2038 expiration date, these cookies will devour themselves after two years, assuming the browser never returns to [...]
Google To Watchdog: Mind Your Own Business
Peter Fleischer, Google’s top global privacy counsel, said data retention issues are of no concern to a European privacy watchdog group.Data protection and data retention occupy different parts of the overall online security picture. When the Article 29 Working Party in Europe expressed its concerns about data retention, Google shifted its retention policy to an [...]
Gmail Suffers German Travails
An all-but-final loss of the Gmail trademark case in Germany and a newly-passed law on retaining personal information on its users has Google’s email service reeling.Google might take its Gmail bat and ball, and go home. The company has faced a couple of recent setbacks with Gmail in Germany. Google could shutter the service there [...]
Google Defends Data-Retention Practices
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 [...]
Google Says You Are In Charge
All the fears being sparked over Google’s dominance in search, along with its land-grab of DoubleClick’s data mined consumer information, are really just an illusion.Personalized search is the key to freedom when it comes to using Google. The company’s Peter Fleischer, global policy counsel, said the search giant’s policy’s put the user in charge of [...]
Google’s Persistence Of Memory
There is a reason why Google keeps 18-24 months of search information before anonymizing it – three reasons, actually – and the company discussed them through the Official Google blog.The mechanisms behind Google’s operations seem surreal to people who have been on the Web since Tim Berners-Lee turned it loose over a decade ago. A [...]
Google Enhancing User Privacy
By anonymizing logs of information captured from people who search on Google after 18 to 24 months, the company hopes to improve the perception people have of their privacy being protected.Google keeps data now for as long as finds the information useful. That could be an infinite period due to the relative low cost of [...]
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