Google Develops New Cookie Privacy Features

Mountain View, California - (Website Hosting Directory) - Octohber 24, 2007 - Search engine company, Google, has been engaged in an ongoing process to improve its privacy practices, nd has recently taken a closer look at the question of cookie privacy.

Questions raised in Google's research, include: How long should a web site remember, cookie information in its logs after a user's visit? And when should a cookie expire on your computer? Cookie privacy is both a server and a client issue.

On the server side, Google recently announced that it will anonymize its search server logs, including IP addresses and cookie ID numbers, after 18 months. Google is asking the question about cookie lifetime: when should a cookie expire on your computer? For background: a cookie is a very small file which gets stored on your computer All search engines and most websites use cookies. Why? Cookies remind us of your preferences from the last time you visited our site. For example, Google uses our so-called, PREF cookie, to remember our users, basic preferences, such as the fact that a user wants search results in English, no more than 10 results on a given page, or a SafeSearch setting to filter out explicit sexual content. When Google originally designed the PREF cookie, it set the expiration far into the future, in 2038, because the primary purpose of the cookie was to preserve preferences, not to let them be forgotten.

Google has been mindful of the fact that users can always go to their browsers to change their cookie management settings, e.g. to delete all cookies, delete specific cookies, or accept certain types of cookies (like first-party cookies) but reject others (like third-party cookies).

After listening to feedback from its users and from privacy advocates, Google has reported that it has concluded that it would be a good thing for privacy to significantly shorten the lifetime of our cookies, as long as it could find a way to do so without artificially forcing users to re-enter their basic preferences at arbitrary points in time. And this is why Google has announced a new cookie policy.

In the coming months, Google will start issuing its users cookies that will be set to auto-expire after 2 years, while auto-renewing the cookies of active users during this time period. In other words, users who do not return to Google will have their cookies auto-expire after 2 years. Regular Google users will have their cookies auto-renew, so that their preferences are not lost. And, as always, all users will still be able to control their cookies at any time via their browsers.

Google hopes, that together, these steps, including logs for anonymization and cookie lifetime reduction, are part of its ongoing plan to continue innovating in the area of privacy to protect users.

With the largest index of websites available on the World Wide Web and the industry's most advanced search technology, Google Inc. delivers the fastest and easiest way to find relevant information on the Internet. Google's technological innovations have earned the company numerous industry awards and citations, including two Webby Awards; two WIRED magazine Readers Raves Awards; Best Internet Innovation and Technical Excellence Award from PC Magazine; Best Search Engine on the Internet from Yahoo! Internet Life; Top Ten Best Cybertech from TIME magazine; and Editor's Pick from CNET. A growing number of companies worldwide, including Yahoo! and its international properties, Sony Corporation and its global affiliates, AOL/Netscape, and Cisco Systems, rely on Google to power search on their websites. A privately held company based in Mountain View, Calif., Google's investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers and Sequoia Capital.

For more information Google, please visit: www.google.com.

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