KEY POINTS:
Google's official blog has a post on the internet giant's latest attempt to placate privacy advocates by cutting the length of time it will keep internet cookies for.
Cookies are little parcels of data sent from the web servers of companies to your web browser to record your web activity.
As Google points out, the use of cookies can be very beneficial to the user: "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," the Google blog reads.
But cookies can also assemble a serious amount of information about a user and when you multiply that by the number of Google users - hundreds of millions of people, you suddenly have a huge amount of data on people's web usage habits.
That's really useful to Google when its designing products - it knows what people want.
While the cookies don't record what web sites you visit, they give a clue as to how you prefer to use the web.
While Google cookies sent to the computers of Google users used to be set to expire in 2038, they will now expire after two years - if the user does not return to Google.
The chances of the average internet user not returning to Google in a two year period are pretty slim, so little will really change.
But the policy and Google's vow to anonymise its search server logs after 18 months, go some way to easing the concerns of critics that Google has too much info on its users.
If you're really concerned about privacy, you can of course delete cookies in your web browser preferences, but that may require you to continually readjust settings that the cookie would normally take care of.
How do you feel about cookies? Do you clean them out regularly or are you happy to let web companies know how you use the web?
COMMENTS
GD
If the someone advertised "Buy iPods and Apple products here" in the NZ Herald classifieds, which led to a home business that did parallel importing of iPods and iMacs, rather than a legitimate Apple distributor, would NZ Herald be responsible for false advertising? Would NZ Herald now have the responsibility of policing advertisers are genuine? If not so, then why should Google have the responsibility of policing their advertisers? No, it should not be GOogle who polices the advertisers.. but Google can certainly enhance the customer's experience, if they allow customers to rate the authenticity and accuracy of mapping keyword to the ads that show up and show this rating next to ads. So an advertiser with 1000 verified ratings of authenticity definitely seem more genuine compared to advertiser with -45 rating. Ratings can only add value to their ranking algorithms. In the end, Google should balance their revenue generation drivers with the consumer satisfaction drivers.
Bishfish
"Bait and switch" has been around for decades, and is illegal in most western countries.
Goole's adsense programme has minuscule control over the purchase and use of keywords, including trade marked brand names making 'passing off' or 'bait and switch' easier and potentially profitable.
This problem, plus the very widespread and virtually uncontrolled click-fraud problems, have been simmering for two or three years without any real action from Google. Are things coming to a head? Both have enormous implications for Google, all bad.
