Google defends user data policy after EU report

By Eric Auchard

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc (GOOG.O) on Monday defended a policy of retaining data on Web users for up to 18 months as necessary to improve search results, responding to an EU report that saw no need for search services to keep personal data beyond six months.

A group of data protection commissioners from across the European Union found that computer Web addresses and cookie monitoring are personal information that search services should do more to protect.

The long-anticipated set of recommendations for how European data protection laws should be applied to Web search services was published on Friday and can be found at tinyurl.com/5yukzm.

The report by the so-called Article 29 Working Party calls for increased user notification and warns Web search services that fail to do so may be unlawful.

Cookies are small bits of text that mark the comings and goings of computer users to Web sites. They are widely used by commercial sites to make Web surfing more convenient and by advertisers to measure audiences. But they also raise privacy concerns due to their potential to track user behavior.

"It is the opinion of the Working Party that search engines in their role as collectors of user data have so far insufficiently explained the nature and purpose of their operations to the users of their services," the report states.

"The Working Party does not see a basis for a retention period beyond 6 months," the study concludes.

In a statement issued on Monday, Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel, said his company disagreed with key findings in the report and argued that privacy policies must be balanced against efforts to make Web services easier to use.