Google to beef up privacy

Mountain View (CA) - Increasing pressure from individual users to the US government has caused Google to announce new measures that will increase privacy and anonymity for online searchers.

The goal is to make it less obvious for hackers or other outside sources to connect specific users to the search requests made on Google.com. The move is also designed to ensure compliance with different world laws that specify how long search engines are allowed to hold on to such information.

Search engine privacy has moved to the forefront of Internet controversy ever since AOL accidentally leaked a massive log of search histories of its users. The issue was also debated when a federal investigation sought to have search engines turn over specific information that is supposedly protected under the sites’ privacy policies.

As part of Google’s plan, it will get rid of part of user’s IP addresses when they run a search, which will make it more difficult to see the origin of the search. It will also "depersonalize computer cookies", also adding to the anonymity of individual searches.