Microsoft has told European authorities it is prepared to cut the time it holds users' search data from 18 months to six, if all search companies will follow suit.
The company made its announcement on Tuesday, as a response to pressure from the European Commission's data protection advisory group, the Article 29 Working Party. The group recommended the data-retention cut in April.
"We've evaluated the multiple uses of search data and believe that we can, in time, move to a six-month timeframe while retaining our strong method of anonymisation," John Vassallo, Microsoft's vice president of EU affairs, said in a statement.
Search companies keep the IP addresses of their users for a period before making them anonymous. Before that, the information is used alongside other data, such as search queries, to improve relevance of search results and target advertising to the user, among other reasons.
"Ultimately, the search engine that has access to the most data is able to improve the relevance of its search results, which provides more consumer value and gives the company a competitive advantage," Vassallo said.
Microsoft said it would make the change only if other search companies also cut the time they retain data, prior to anonymisation.
"What we've done since April is evaluate the multiple uses of search data to ascertain if we can, in time, move to a six-month timeframe," Peter Cullen, Microsoft's chief privacy strategist, said in the statement. "Our answer is yes, we can, but we don't believe it makes sense for us to make this change until our competitors also commit to meeting this higher standard with respect to both the method and timeframe for anonymisation."
Rival search and advertising company Google announced in September it was halving its data-retention period, from 18 months to nine. However, Microsoft said Google would need to reduce that period to six months to overcome "competitive challenges".
Talkback
OK. Its nice that everybody is talking advertising "dis-armament". How does Vint Cerf or Joe Bureaucrat verify that they've anonymised their collected data? What's to keep them from ftp-ing it to the US or Kuala-Lampur and continue to use it? How does the EU plan on making it stick?
If I'm in the habit of looking at Google or Microsoft search pages over and over, does the 6 months start on the first look at a page or the last? Somebody in the EU government going to be keeping track of when I'm on or off the search engines? Are they going to be keeping track of only European search engine websites?
This is an idiot's response(Microsoft) to another idiot's regulation (the EU). I suppose you should expect that from a confederation based on a 300 PAGE constitution!
I supose if you search the same pages every day, then the retention of your search data will be permanent by default. At least I think that is the most likley senario.
It is a totally un-enforceable regulation. Somebody at the EU is trying to justify his paycheck.
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