Google had recently launched ‘Google Suggest‘ feature, which is intertwined with Google search, Google toolbar and its recently launched browser christened ‘Google Chrome‘. According to Google, the Google suggest feature is designed to make searching simple, fast and easy by prompting suggestions associated to the search term being typed in the search box.
In the post I wrote about ‘Google Suggest’, I briefly discussed the usability factor and how it could enhance the overall search experience. However, it also meant that people would be more tempted to choose one the suggested options and this could invariably mean the death of long tail keyword search. Privacy concerns were also raised by many but those voices were lost as Google launched its new browser a couple of days later. Now that the dust has subsided over the launch of Chrome, Google has finally decided to allay those privacy concerns.
In a recent post “Official Google Blog: Update to Google Suggest“, Google has clarified that it does not store log data for all users. Further, they added that all the search terms being typed in the search box needs to be sent back to one of its data center, to decipher what is being written and thus provide suitable suggestions. According to Google, they only store 2% of this log data (IP addresses) and will use it to monitor and improve their services. In order to silence critics who are against the storage of this data, Google has announced that it would anonymize this data within 24 hours. Here, I would like to quote an excerpt from the particular blog post, “ However, given the concerns that have been raised about Google storing this information — and its limited potential use — we decided that we will anonymize it within about 24 hours (basically, as soon as we practically can) in the 2% of Google Suggest requests we use. This will take a little time to implement, but we expect it to be in place before the end of the month.”
This clearly reiterates Google’s commitment towards safeguarding user privacy and is a great way of fending off allegations pertaining to users’ privacy.
