Google global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer said the company would now program its cookies to expire after two years for a user that does not return to the Google search site.
The announcement is seen as a pre-emptive move as privacy advocates in the US continue to push Federal regulators for more stringent controls over the way online companies deal with personal information.
The company already promised recently that it would “anonymise” search server logs – including IP addresses and cookie ID numbers – after 18 months.
“We are committed to an ongoing process to improve our privacy practices, and have recently taken a closer look at the question of cookie privacy,” Mr Fleischer said.
A cookie is a small file that gets stored on the users’ computer when they visit a search site. The cookie reminds the search engine of the preferences the user sought the last time they visited the site. All search engines and most web sites use cookies.
The preferences let Google and other search engines remember basics, such as the user wanting search results delivered in English language, or that they only want ten results per page.
“After listening to feedback from our users and from privacy advocates, we've concluded that it would be a good thing for privacy to significantly shorten the lifetime of our cookies — as long as we could find a way to do so without artificially forcing users to re-enter their basic preferences at arbitrary points in time,” Mr Fleischer said.
“And this is why we’re announcing a new cookie policy.”
For more Web Applications news, click here.
