Search giants in privacy race

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01/08/2007

Ask.com has announced plans to make web searches completely anonymous - a first among major search engines. In another move aimed at improving privacy, Google has announced that it will slash the lifetime of its cookies to two years. The new cookies will be deleted unless the user returns to a Google site within the two-year period. They were originally set to expire in 2038. Meanwhile, Microsoft says it will make search data anonymous after 18 months - removing cookie IDs, IP addresses, and other identifiers that tie searches to specific machines. Meanwhile, Yahoo! has said it will make its search data anonymous after only 13 months. The privacy race is on.

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