Google has decided to reduce the period it keeps personal information in its datalogs by half, from 18 to 9 months.

Google will now anonymize IP adresses on their servers at an earlier stage.

Google has been in conflict with the EU Commission on this issue.

Since IP addresses are shifted around by Internet service providers, Google has argued that the IP address cannot be used to identify individuals. EU disagrees.

Google is using the data to improve it search results, prevent fraud and to target its text ads more accurately.

In a blog post Peter Fleischer of Google says that:

“We’re significantly shortening our previous 18-month retention policy to address regulatory concerns and to take another step to improve privacy for our users.”

That Google is trying to handle a PR problem (”address regulatory concern”) is obvious, but it is interesting to note that the previous arrangement was not good enough, and that it is — in fact — possible to improve the privacy of users.

Yesterday Google filed a response to the EU Commission.

To the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten Fleischer adds that Google will never give such data to advertisers or others. He does not rule out the possibility of reducing the storage period even further.

See also: Google Privacy Issues (Pandia)