Do you mind if search engines archive your search queries?

Ask.com, one of the second-tier search engines, believes enough of you do. That's why it just launched AskEraser, a new feature that promises to delete all search queries from its servers within hours, compared to the industry practice of 18 months. It may not be ideal for advertisers looking to pitch you offers based on where you've clicked, but for privacy-minded netizens it's a step forward. As the company explains: "We believe that you as a user should have the power to control the usage of your search history".

Unlike so-callled anonymising software that hides the digital tracks of web surfers, AskEraser is free and fairly straightforward. When a visitor goes to Ask to generate a search query, they are one click away from private (after a few hours, anyhow) searching. “It works like a light switch,” Doug Leeds, senior vice president for product management at Ask.com, told The New York Times.

But will the lure of privacy really win over converts to Ask.com? There are plenty of doubters, (including Ixquick, which deletes search logs after 48 hours). As Valleywag points out, the data are still being shared -- namely, with Google for the purpose of delivering targeted ads to Ask users -- and with the government and police if they manage to present a court order. Ask's Leeds tells The New York Times that it cannot guarantee completely anonymous web searches, but it does offer a greater degree of privacy than the likes of Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft (each of which store search queries on server logs for over a year).

For privacy advocates, that still won't be enough.

Comments

[David Russell]

Privacy is all well and good, but the simple problem with Ask.com is that its searching is garbage. I'd much rather use CustomizeGoogle (a Firefox extension) to achieve much the same degree of privacy without sacrificing search quality.