Microsoft, Yahoo! Announce Plans To Address Privacy Concerns

Following search engine Ask’s announcement last week of a feature to be introduced later this year that will allow users to maintain a masked existence on the site, bigger wigs in the industry are now paying greater heed to privacy concerns and stepping out with their own plans on how they themselves intend to keep their users’ information safe.

Microsoft and Yahoo! are the latest entities to speak out on the subject and let be known their respective strategies.

(In March 2007, Google did trumpet on user privacy at its own pulpit, stating that it would remove cookies after 18-24 months. The problem is that they failed to explain that any use of Google Search within those 18-24 months following the creation of the cookie would “reset” the ticker, effectively keeping those bits of information containing one’s IP and other stuff in an unending loop. Naughty Google. Naughty, naughty.)

Microsoft plans to “permanently remove the Internet Protocol address and other identifying data associated with Web searches after 18 months unless the searcher wants the information stored longer. The company will also store search terms separately from account information that personally identifies a user, such as name, email address and phone number, gathered as part of other Microsoft service.” Yahoo! has said that it intends to do more or less of the same, though the moment of automatic deletion will come a bit sooner; by default, the clock will be set at 13 months.

We also think you’d like to know that a company spokesman, Jim Cullinan, did manage to let slip that data might maintained for an indefinite period of time if “the company is required to retain it for law enforcement or legal processes.” How great is that?

Sounds like the top three engines are just asking their users to march out their doors, eh?

Alright, so Ask.com will remain browsers’ best bet to go about one’s searches unrecorded. That doesn’t mean all those people that don’t really want their information stored unnecessarily will actually migrate from their habitual favorite to familiarize themselves with the industry “underdog”, right?

I’m actually not so sure that they won’t. It’s true that it’s not at all plausible that we’ll find Ask making its way past Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Google due simply to its insistence on giving users privacy if/when they want privacy. But it’s hard to imagine #5 won’t climb up the ladder at least a little, either. The engine is arguably one of the best on the Net at present, even though it’s not astonishingly popular (still gets a good amount of traffic, though), and it’s constantly adding new – and sometimes really cool - stuff. To be honest, if it markets AskEraser well and gets people to really think about what the competition is doing to keep them confidential (not much), it really could have a shot at making some really impressive inroads. Not straight to #1, of course. But maybe somewhere happily close by.

What do you think?