If the seemingly never ending race for the presidency has left you thirsty for more spin doctoring, Google seems to be willing to quench your thirst. In an entry on the Official Google Blog, titled Another step to protect user privacy, Google set out to try and squash the latest uproar from privacy advocates and EU government officials by explaining their log retention policy. If you really have nothing better to do, heres the complete response from Peter Flescher, Global Privacy Counsel at Google.

Google explains retaining data help improve search quality (you mean make AdSense more efficient hence more profitable?), improve security, fight fraud and reduce spam. They claim that after 9 months, they anonymize the data hence protecting your privacy.

Technically, their definition of anonymization is that after 9 months they remove “some” of the bits from your IP address. Even though many ISPs use dynamic addresses, there is still a way to trace your activity back to you, or a small pool of people that had an IP from the same range as you. If someone (hacker, government official) was able to retain your ISPs records and compare them with Googles, the line will be drawn directly back to YOU.

It seems these days if you really want to surf anonymously without having to use uber technical tools, simply don a hood, go to a cafe with public wifi, pay cash for your Latte and never look up at the security camera.