July 16 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc., owner of the world's most popular search engine, said it will address privacy concerns by reducing the lifetime of ``cookies'' installed on the computers of people who visit its Web site.
The cookies, files planted on personal computers to track Internet use, will automatically expire two years after the last visit to Google's site, Peter Fleischer, the company's chief privacy lawyer, wrote on a blog today. Mountain View, California- based Google previously designed its cookies to expire in 2038, he said.
The European Union's data-protection agency has criticized Google for holding onto user information for too long. The New York State Consumer Protection Board on May 9 urged U.S. regulators to delay Google's $3.1 billion takeover of online advertising firm DoubleClick Inc. until the company better protects consumers' privacy rights.
``After listening to feedback from our users and from privacy advocates, we've concluded that it would be a good thing for privacy to significantly shorten the lifetime of our cookies,'' Fleischer wrote on the blog.
Users also can set their cookie preferences by adjusting settings on their own PCs, Fleischer said.
Google in March said Internet-protocol addresses and cookie- identification numbers stored on its servers will become anonymous after 18 months.
Shares of Google rose 83 cents to $552.99 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares have climbed 20 percent this year.
To contact the reporter on this story: Peter J. Brennan in Los Angeles at pbrennan3@bloomberg.net
