In some cases, we retain data for limited periods when it needs to be kept for legitimate business or legal purposes. You can read about Google’s data retention periods, including how long it takes us to delete your information.

Google collects a lot of information about the services you use and how you use them, including when you visit a website using a Google service for advertisement. In the past, Google stated in their Privacy Policy: <em>“We strike a reasonable balance between the competing pressures we face, such as the privacy of our users, the security of our systems and the need for innovation. We believe anonymizing IP addresses after 9 months and cookies in our search engine logs after 18 months strikes the right balance”</em>. Today, these limitations of time are gone from the Privacy Policy, although <a href="http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=162743">some pages</a> still acknowledge this. So we must conclude that Google has decided to stop trying to find the right balance between privacy of users and their own needs.