Good Morning Silicon Valley

The issue has been around for years, but all of a sudden the major search engines are taking a major interest in user privacy. Google kicked things off in March by announcing it would anonymize search data after 18-24 months, then in June, narrowed that to 18 months after getting some pressure from European governments. Just last week, Google announced that the cookies it places on your computer to keep track of preferences, travels and the like would now be set to expire in two years instead of the previous default date of 2038 (if, that is, you never visit a Google site during that time, so good luck with that). A few days later, Ask.com upped the ante considerably, announcing plans for a tool called AskErase that will give users advanced controls over their search history and privacy preferences.

Today, Ask was on stage again, this time in a supporting role to Microsoft, looking to capture some of that privacy mindshare for itself. Together, Microsoft and Ask called on the industry “to develop global privacy principles for data collection, use and protection related to searching and online advertising.” And to demonstrate its commitment, Microsoft made some revisions to its own policies, setting its search logs to clean out after 18 months, providing a way to opt-out of behaviorally targeted ads from the Microsoft ad network, and vowing to store search records separately from personally identifiable account data. On top of all that, Yahoo today raised the bar on data retention, saying it will anonymize its search data after a mere 13 months.

So what’s behind this burst of activity? First, it’s the hope that privacy policies can emerge as a distinguishing feature and selling point among the search engines. Second, and probably more important, these moves are meant to show good faith as the search engines and their acquisitions come under more government scrutiny here and abroad. And third is a theory I sort of like: Who has the biggest cache of user data? Google. Who potentially benefits the most from liberal data retention? Google. How do you whittle down Google’s advantage? Encourage strict limits and user control of data retention and force Google to respond. As Jeff Nolan writes at Venture Chronicles, “Competitors know that it’s not enough just to be better at search than Google; they also have to take away something that Google depends on for it’s strength, in this case the massive amount of personal data that they collect and the secrecy they maintain while doing it.”