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Posted by Peter Fleischer, Global
Privacy Counsel

Over the years we’ve taken many steps to protect our users'
data and privacy. For example, we have resisted href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/response-to-doj-motion.html" >
overly-broad government subpoenas; we've designed our
services to give users a choice between href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/02/personally-speaking.html" >
personalized services and general services; and we've
engineered our services to allow users href="https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?hl=en&continue=http://www.google.com/history/?zx=8TejGP12Uv4&nui=1&ltmpl= reauth&service=hist&srr=1" >
to see and control how much data they wish to share with us.
Recently, we took another important step to improve our privacy
practices by announcing href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/taking-steps-to-further-improve-our.html" >
a new policy to anonymize our server logs after 18 to 24
months, becoming the first leading search company to publish a data
retention policy. We also posted here to

href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/why-does-google-remember-information.html" >
explain the factors that guided our decision to retain server
log data for 18 to 24 months.

The Article 29 Working Party, an advisory panel composed of
representatives from all of the E.U.'s national data protection
authorities, has sent us a href="http://ec.europa.eu/justice_home/fsj/privacy/news/docs/pr_google_16_05_07_en.pdf" >
letter in response to our commitment to anonymize server logs.
In it, they're asking us to provide further information about
our new policy, and to explain why we feel that the time period of
18 to 24 months is “proportionate” under European data protection
principles. For some time, we've discussed many things with the
Working Party, ranging from issues raised by Google products like
Gmail and Google Desktop to industry-wide concerns, such as the
challenges of protecting privacy in the Web 2.0 era. We’re pleased
that this most recent letter from the Working Party acknowledges
our ongoing engagement with the data protection community and, in
particular, our "readiness to consult with it [the Working
Party] in contrast with a relative lack of engagement by some of
the other leading players in the search engine community”.

In the spirit of transparency, we're publishing href="http://64.233.179.110/blog_resources/Google_response_Working_Party_06_2007.pdf" >
our response to the Working Party's letter. The Internet is
a global medium, and the principles at stake — privacy, security,
innovation and legal obligations to retain data — have an impact
beyond Europe, and outside of the realm of privacy. These
principles sometimes conflict: while shorter retention periods are
good for privacy, longer retention periods are needed for security,
innovation and compliance reasons. We believe we’ve struck a
reasonable balance between these various factors. Our policies are
consistent with EU data protection laws, which acknowledge the need
to set data retention periods that are proportionate and that
enable companies like Google to comply with legal
requirements.

We have a legitimate interest in retaining search server logs for a
number of reasons:

to improve our search algorithms for the benefit of users

to defend our systems from malicious access and exploitation
attempts

to maintain the integrity of our systems by fighting click
fraud and web spam

to protect our users from threats like spam and phishing

to respond to valid legal orders from law enforcement as they
investigate and prosecute serious crimes like child exploitation;
and

to comply with data retention legal obligations.

After considering the Working Party's concerns, we are
announcing a new policy: to anonymize our search server logs after
18 months, rather than the previously-established period of 18 to
24 months. We believe that we can still address our legitimate
interests in security, innovation and anti-fraud efforts with this
shorter period. However, we must point out that future data
retention laws may obligate us to raise the retention period to 24
months. We also firmly reject any suggestions that we could meet
our legitimate interests in security, innovation and anti-fraud
efforts with any retention period shorter than 18 months. We are
considering the Working Party's concerns regarding cookie
expiration periods, and we are exploring ways to redesign cookies
and to reduce their expiration without artificially forcing users
to re-enter basic preferences such as language preference. We plan
to make an announcement about privacy improvements for our cookies
in the coming months.

As we build new products and services, we look forward to
continuing our discussion with the Article 29 Working Party and
with privacy stakeholders around the world. Our common goal is to
improve privacy protections for our users.

Tags: , CounselOver, Fleischer, Global, Peter, Posted, Privacy, years

Guest post by John
Battelle

Over the past few years I’ve made at least a dozen 90-minute treks
from my href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=230 Hillside Ave, Greenbrae, CA 94904&spn=0.004066,0.007175&t=k&hl=en" >
forested perch at the north end of San Francisco Bay down to
the href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=google mountain view&ll=37.423406,-122.082659&spn=0.003893,0.007023&t=k&num=10&start=0&hl=en" >
Googleplex, which sits at the heart of Silicon Valley. The
reason? I was writing a book, and Google was a major part of the
story. I always enjoyed the drive, I’d go down to interview the
founders, early product managers, recent hires and advisors, and
I’d drive up with a full tape recorder and plenty to think about.

But last Friday I drove down for another reason. My book href="http://www.battellemedia.com/thesearch/" >The Search: How Google and Its Rivals
Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our
Culture, has just come out, and much to my astonishment,
Google invited me down to give a talk. While Google staffers were
extremely generous with their time, the fact remained that the book
told the story as I heard it from many different sources, inside
and outside the company. And on my own href="http://www.battellemedia.com/" >Searchblog, where I cover
search and its implications, I've been known to call Google out
as often as I offer praise.

As I drove down, I fretted over any number of things. Who might
show up for the talk (what if no one did?!). What mistakes might be
pointed out - flaws in my reporting, my writing, or my conclusions?
What if the famously combative Google culture turned on me?

I needn’t have worried. My host Karen Wickre, whom I’ve known since
my days as a cub reporter at MacWeek, met me at the door, and
before I could make my way to the lecture hall, a clutch of
friendly folks had surrounded me. Once there I saw href="http://battellemedia.com/archives/001653.php" >Louis
Monier, founder of Alta Vista and the star of Chapter Three,
who had recently left eBay to join Google. And href="http://www.norvig.com/" >Peter Norvig, Google’s director
of search quality, who helped me understand Google’s core search
service and even presented at my href="http://battellemedia.com/archives/000960.php" >Web 2.0
conference last year. And many more, many of whom I had spoken
to, but most of whom I had never met.

I began by explaining how I came to write the book, a three-year
odyssey which started with a link, back in late 2001, to Google’s
first
Zeitgeist. I read how I came to the idea of the href="http://battellemedia.com/archives/000063.php" >Database of
Intentions, and I read some funny emails from webmasters who
had encountered the early href="http://www.google.com/corporate/history.html" >BackRub
crawler. And because it was clear the audience wanted to ponder
the future of the company they had joined, I read from the chapter
entitled “Google Today, Google Tomorrow.”

The best part, by far, was the Q&A that followed. Googlers are
some of the most sincere questioners I've ever encountered. The
exchange felt very much like conversations I've had with
graduate students when I was teaching at Berkeley - no agendas,
just a desire to challenge and to learn. Afterward folks lined up
to have me sign their books. As the line dwindled, I looked behind
me and there was Eric Schmidt, who more than any other source went
out of his way to lend me his time and insights. He shook my hand
and thanked me for coming, and I have to say, I was honored by the
gesture. I did my best to be fair in the book, but it's never
easy to read about yourself, to be the subject of someone
else's conclusions. The same could be said of the entire Google
team who came to listen and to converse, and I'm truly grateful
for the experience.

Tags: , BattelleOver, few, Guest, John, past, post, years

Posted by Corey Vickrey, Software
Engineer

For more than six years, we have compiled a regular list of popular
searches called the href="http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html">Google
Zeitgeist. This has been our way to highlight the sorts of
queries people type into the Google search box every day. More
recently, we unveiled Google
Trends to show the popularity of search terms in relation to
each other overtime, and how different cities or regions may care
(or not) about the trends.

And today we're introducing a new toy we are calling href="http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends">Hot Trends.
It's a new feature of Google Trends for sharing the the hottest
current searches with you in very close to real time. What's on
our collective mind as we search for information? What's
interesting to people right now? Hot Trends will tell you. At a
glance, you'll see the huge variety of topics capturing our
attention, from current events to daily crossword puzzle clues to
the latest celebrity gossip. Hot Trends is updated throughout the
day, so check back often.

For each Hot Trend, you will see results from Google News, Google
Blog Search and web search, which help explain why the search is
hot. For example, the href="http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends?q=creed thoughts&date=2007-5-17">
#7 item on Thursday, May 17th was the cryptic phrase [creed
thoughts]. The associated news stories and blog results show that
this odd term is the name of a fake website mentioned on the season
finale of The Office.
Mystery solved. Of course, some searches are not as easily
explained. Visit the href="http://groups.google.com/group/google-trends-hot-trends">Hot
Trends group to read the explanations of others and offer your
own.

If you want to look further back, you can also see what queries
were hot on a particular day. On Wednesday, May 16th, [ href="http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends?q=melinda doolittle&date=2007-5-16&sa=X">
melinda doolittle], [ href="http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends?q=halo 3 beta&date=2007-5-16&sa=X">
halo 3 beta], and [ href="http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends?q=ge dishwasher recall&date=2007-5-16&sa=X">
ge dishwasher recall] were on the Hot Trends list. If you
don't know why, maybe you'll learn something.

Hot Trends aren't the search terms people look for most often
– those are pretty predictable, like [weather] or [games] or
perhaps [myspace]. Yes, [sex] too. Instead, the Hot Trends
algorithm analyzes millions of searches to find those that are
deviating the most relative to their past traffic. And the outcome
is the Hot Trends list.

In addition to Hot Trends, we've updated Google Trends so that
it's easier to use and, we hope, more useful to you. In
addition to viewing the top search terms by country and city, you
can view the top "subregions" (e.g. states within the
U.S.) across more than 70 countries. You can now compare the
leading href="http://www.google.com/trends?q=hillary clinton, rudy giuliani, barack obama, john mccain">
presidential candidates around the country, for instance, or
find out which states have the worst href="http://www.google.com/trends?q=mosquitoes&ctab=0&geo=US">
mosquito problems.

With the release of Hot Trends, we're retiring the weekly
Zeitgest list, but we will still compile monthly lists for each
country, and will continue our annual year-end roll-ups too.

Hot Trends is currently available only in English, but we hope to
release international versions in the future.

Tags: , Corey, EngineerFor, Posted, six, software, Vickrey, years