New Yahoo! Privacy Policy to Pressure Google, Microsoft

Search engines: They’ve built their businesses on providing targeted advertising opportunities based on what they know about user search terms and behavior. This, while accepted to be a viable business model, has nonetheless sparked concerns over privacy and the collection — and security — of subscriber data. Ever been creeped out by the “targeted” Gmail links served up alongside your messages, based on what you wrote in that message? If so, you wouldn’t be alone.

Yahoo! made privacy advocates and government regulators alike a little happier on this front this week with the announcement that it would retain personally identifiable information related to searches for only 90 days.

Rivals Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are likely to feel the heat to match Yahoo!’s move. Google for now strips some, not all, of the personally tied information from search info after nine months, but Microsoft keeps the info for double that time.

The controversy over deep-packet inspection, the conversation over opt-in and opt-out carrier marketing and a gathering climate in Washington to limit the use of subscriber data through legislative regulation all mean we’ve likely not heard the end of this story.

“I urge other leading online companies to match or beat the commitments announced by Yahoo,” said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass), speaking to the New York Times.