Google is modifying how it keeps track of users via cookies, by setting cookies to expire in two years if a user doesn't return and auto-extending cookie length for active users, according to a policy change announced by Google's Global Policy Counsel Peter Fleischer on Monday. Currently Google sets their cookies to expire sometime in the 2030s, a time period which Fleischer said was chosen to keep users from losing preferences such as how many search results to see on a page at a random time.
Fleischer attributed the change to concerns over privacy:
In reality, the change doesn't make much of a difference. People who go two years between Google searches on a given browser will have their old queries de-linked from their new ones. Google users who do not occasionally destroy their cookies will continue to have their entire search history recorded for posterity and potential subpoenas. Google users who sign up for an account and don't know to UNCLICK the Web History box will have almost all of their Web usage recorded by Google.
Now what would have been really cool is if the ultra-smart Google engineers -- the ones who created Gmail and the very good PageRank search algorithm, separated preference cookies from logging cookies. That way Google could set the preference cookie for hundreds of years, but users could decide -- based on how much trust they have in Google and the government -- how long they would like Google to be able to log their search queries and/or internet browsing.
That would have been a cool announcement. Auto-extending cookies? Not so interesting and not very privacy enhancing. THREAT LEVEL is still waiting for a sign that Google really wants to be a leader in information privacy practices.
