Google Takes Steps Towards Greater Privacy

Google recently announced that it will soon start anonymizing search logs older than 18-24 months. Full details can be found in their Log Retention Policy FAQ (PDF). This is a heartening step back towards their “Don’t Be Evil” corporate philosophy, which some think has been largely abandoned.

I’ve just recently started using Scroogle as a way of defeating their tracking of my every search (their site is awful; Wikipedia has more readable information about the project), although the motives of the man behind it, Daniel Brandt, who also runs the Google Watch site, may be questionable. Still, he doesn’t have much incentive for keeping a log of queries and IP addresses, and if he did, since he’s not giving me a cookie, he can’t tie all my searches together.