Food For Thought on Web Privacy

A recent article over at CNN brings up an interesting fact: Search engines like Google and Yahoo gather and hold onto your search history, and then tailor the sorts of advertisements and content that you end up with based on what your prior searches have been. 

Knowing that everything you search for on Google or Yahoo will be collected definitely makes you think a little harder when you start to type in a search. There is something unsettling and Big Brother-esque about these companies knowing everything.

But the search engine folks don't collect this information to embarrass you or blackmail you. They hold onto it because all of this information allows them to improve their search engine and indexing formulas. If they didn’t have this data, search engines as we know them wouldn’t exist. Anyone who remembers what Yahoo and Google used to be like even a decade ago can tell you that there used to be thousands of pages that were essentially useless mixed in with the pages that were practical and important. So as long as these companies can keep this information as secure as possible, and as long as they are using it to improve the quality of their product, then there shouldn’t be a problem with them using the data.  

Another thing to consider is that they only hold onto the information for a certain period of time. Yahoo holds on to information that can personally identify you for only 90 days. Google holds onto it for nine months, while Microsoft holds onto it for eighteen. So when you went to Amazon last July and ordered that KC and the Sunshine Band retrospective, nobody will be able to hold it against you after a year or so.