Google has been warned that it may be violating European Union privacy laws by storing search data from its users for up to two years, the latest example of a US technology giant whose practices face a collision with European standards.

An advisory panel of data-protection chiefs from the 27 countries in the EU sent a letter last week to Google asking it to justify its policy of retaining data on Internet addresses and individual search habits, Frisco Roscam Abbing, a spokesman for the European Union’s justice commissioner, Franco Frattini, said.

Privacy excerpts said the latter was the first salvo in what could become a determined effort by the European Commission to force Google to change how it does business in Europe, where the 400 million consumers outnumber those in US.

Any effort to impose limits on Google, which operates under US law, would be the latest in series of increasingly aggressive actions taken by European Policy makers to rein in global technology companies. “Frattini called the working groups query to Google pertinent, appropriate and legitimate,” Abbing said.

According to one member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorize to speak for the group, the panel is concerned that Google’s retention period is too long and is intended to serve commercial interests.The data is often used to direct advertising to users.

“The discussion is only just beginning,” said Christoph Gusy, a privacy law expert at the University of Bielefeld in Germany. “Pressure to regulate this type of business activity, which is still in its infancy, is building, and what you are seeing is beginning of a serious effort in Europe.

Google describe the committee’s request as reasonable. It noted that the company itself raised the issue with European officials in March by announcing that it was shortening the retention of customer data, which had previously been unlimited, to up to two years.

Other large Search Engines like Yahoo and MSN Search have not disclossed how long they keep user data.

“There can be reasonable arguments for and against keeping server logs for this length of time,” said Peter Fleischer, Google’s global privacy counsel. “But we believe that between 18 and 24 months is a reasonable length of time to balance privacy issues with business concerns.”

In a letter to be sent to the European Union panel, Google will argue that the retention periods are necessary to ward off hackers and prevent Internet advertising fraud, and to improve Google’s search algorithm, Fleischer said. The panel plans to meet on June 19 in Brussels to consider Google’s response.

The most prominent European case against a US technology giant focused on Microsoft, which the European Commission found in 2004 to have violated antitrust laws for using its de facto monopoly Windows Operating System to promote it’s own server software and desktop media players.

The company settled a similar case with American antitrust regulators in 1994.

Microsoft is appealing the commission’s decision. In the meantime, the commission and European competition officials have fined the company nearly $1 billion for failing to comply with the terms of its original order.

Source : TOI (NYTNS)

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