But as far as this move by Yahoo! is concerned, the company says that users will not witness any difference in their experience with Yahoo! products or services, or any other facility! Above all, advertising on Yahoo! will proceed in the same way just as it was going on in the past.

"In our world of customized online services, responsible use of data is critical to establishing and maintaining user trust," said Anne Toth, Yahoo's vice president of policy. "We know that our users expect relevant and compelling content and advertising when they visit Yahoo, but they also want assurances that we are focused on protecting their privacy."

"This policy represents Yahoo's assessment of the minimum amount of time we need to retain data in order to respond to the needs of our business while deepening our trusted relationship with users," Toth said. "We're proud this new policy sets a new benchmark for the industry."

"What we've done since April is evaluate the multiple uses of search data to ascertain if we can, in time, move to a six-month time frame," said Peter Cullen, Microsoft's chief privacy strategist. "Our answer is yes, we can, but we don't believe it makes sense for us to make this change until our competitors also commit to meeting this higher standard with respect to both the method and time frame for anonymization."

It seems that Google is not that eager to make a similar move, and right now they need at least 9 months worth of data " so that they can further improve their search results in best possible way.

But this move will certainly put pressure on other search engines!

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