Google’s Persistence Of Memory

There is a reason why Google keeps 18-24 months of search information before anonymizing it – three reasons, actually – and the company discussed them through the Official Google blog.

Google’s Persistence Of Memory

The mechanisms behind Google’s operations seem surreal to people who have been on the Web since Tim Berners-Lee turned it loose over a decade ago. A short time after it debuted and people started launching websites all over the world, the need for a quality search product became apparent.

Whether one likes it these days or not, Google became that product. Their ubiquity has become a lightning rod for controversy, be it on censorship in China, or privacy issues at home. One of the company’s legal heavy hitters, Peter Fleischer, wrote about Google and search history, and why they remember searches:

Three factors were critical. One was maintaining our ability to continue to improve the quality of our search services. Another was to protect our systems and our users from fraud and abuse. The third was complying