Our friends over at Mountain View have had a hard time in recent months with everyone coming out of the woodwork to criticize their privacy. Whether it is the idea of storing your search history, or the merger with Doubleclick public opinion seems to have concluded that Google could do a better job of keeping your private information private.

As a result of this sentiment, according to Google Blog, they are taking steps to help decrease exposure from using their search engine.

Some Changes

Google

The biggest change is that after 18 months Google will “anonymize” your web search. That means that your IP and what you looked for will no longer be stored in their database, or at the very least will no longer be correlated. This is an important change because previously everything you did on Google was linked permanently to your IP. While, in general, this was harmless it did put a lot of responsibility into the hands of Google to maintain site security.

The announcement that has most recently been made is that your Preference Cookies now have an expiration date. Before, it would have been 2038 before your Google PREF cookie was deleted. Now, if you do not go to Google for two years the cookie will automatically delete itself. Anyone who really wanted to could have self-deleted this cookie with little trouble, but this is a good step for those who want to be extra careful with their privacy.

Web 2.0 Roundup

For those who were wondering what is actually stored in your PREF cookie, here is a bit of a rundown.

  • How many search results you want to see per page.
  • Your preferred language
  • Your SafeSearch settings
  • Basic user information

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