Google: For Privacy, Cookies To Auto-Expire After 2 Years

[Bones]

After listening to feedback from our users and from privacy advocates, we've concluded that it would be a good thing for privacy to significantly shorten the lifetime of our cookies

[googleblog.blogspot.com...]

[whitenight]

After listening to feedback from our users

lol nice spin Goog.

By "feedback", do they mean the current and pending lawsuits over the issue?

Funny how lawsuits makes Goog more "user-feedback" oriented

[plumsauce]

I haven't fed a cookie to google, or any other major search engine in years. They don't get to run javascript either.

[JohnRoy]

search google: GoogleAnon

(or always use
s c r o o g l e . org)

[adfree]

2 years, why am I not impressed...

[ebound]

2 years? What are they set to now? I've never looked.

[iThink]

I guess most PCs are reformatted, upgraded and so on every 2-3 years. I have never used a PC for more than 2 years. So cookies expire after 2 years any way.

...and now we have the PR machine of Google giving a positive spin to it.

[ByronM]

Its not like they don't have the business intelligence to match the old data to the new data.

Smoke and Mirrors.

[jomaxx]

I guess they finally gave in to the FUD arguments that Google will be tracking your cookies until "2038".

A few moments' thought makes it clear that the only such cookie left by 2038 will be in a computer on display in the Smithsonian Museum, but it was apparently sexier to say this than to simply call them non-expiring cookies.

[ievans]

Who cares about cookies anyway?

Its the server side tracking that worries me.

"On the server side, we recently announced that we will anonymize our search server logs — including IP addresses and cookie ID numbers — after 18 months."

[vincevincevince]

Google don't specify if they will extend/renew those cookies, i.e. if my cookie has a few days left to run and I use Google's services - will they then extend that to two years from today's date, or let it get shorter until it runs out?

If that is the case then this is no privacy improvement at all - I'm not likely to not use any Google service over a period of two years!

[jeffgroovy]

I have never used a PC for more than 2 years. So cookies expire after 2 years any way.

Agreed, it's almost phenomenal to get a pc to run effectively that long without having to format. I brag to my friends that I can usually milk an OS over the year mark and rarely can I cross the 2 year mark, and I usually buy a new one by 2nd year anyway.

I had no idea that Google's cookies were set to last 38 years. From what I understood based on my use of commission junction I figured the lifespan of cookies were in the few months range at most. Couldn't Google track all the activity of your IP address with or without cookies anyway? Meaning the only way you could actually hide your activities would be to block cookies AND use an IP that lots of other computers are using such as work or hide behind proxies (also blocking cookies?)

[tedster]

As the article said, the main purpose of the cookie is holding user preferences. I've never had any issue with that.

[valeyard]

I'd be more impressed if they redesigned their cookie system to hold user preferences seperately to any ID. Then the prefs cookie could be long lasting without a problem. For multiple users on one machine a locally unique ID could be added.

For now I'll continue zapping the cookie as well as surfing with TOR to anonymise my IP address.

[joelgreen]

Looks like it is "doubleclick purchase" related.

[fe17.news.sp1.yahoo.com...]