In response to a European Union report that suggests search engines should limit details retention to six months, Google on Monday defended its policy of storing notes on search-engine usage for up to 18 months.

European Commission’s spread 29 goods Protection Working Party called for increased protections for users, including user notification, and issued a warning to Web search engines: Failing to protect consumer’s personal knowledge could be illegal.

“It is the opinion of the Working Party that search engines in their role as collectors of user notes have so far insufficiently explained the nature and purpose of their operations to the users of their services,” the report says. “The Working Party does not see a basis for a retention period beyond six months.”

Google Sees Benefits

Peter Fleischer, Google’s global privacy counsel, was quick to reply on the corporate blog. A Google search, he wrote, is far more likely to supply consumers with the data

they are looking for than it did a few years ago — and that has not happened by accident.

It is the conclusion, he said, of Google engineers painstakingly analyzing the patterns in server logs to improve the relevance of searches. At the same day, he continued, Google has developed privacy policies to give users choices by the info they share with the company.

“We believe that data-retention requirements have to take into detail the need to supply quality products and services for users, like accurate search results, as well as system protection and integrity concerns. We have recently discussed some of the many ways that using that notes helps improve users’ experience, from making our products safe, to preventing scam, to building language models to improve search results,” Fleischer said, noting that how input is used to improve the consumer experience is sometimes missed in discussions about online…

Orginal post by Top Tech News

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