This week, Yahoo joined Google and Microsoft when it announced that it will make user search data anonymous within the next 13 months. All three companies made the move after hearing customers complain about privacy and the lack of a limit on the storage of personal data. Yahoo does have two options when it comes to hanging on to the data, however: if they are required to keep the data for legal reasons or if users request otherwise. Meanwhile, Microsoft said it will make user search data anonymous after 18 months. In related news, Google changed its privacy policy last week, and stated that Google cookies will now expire after two years, instead of in 2038, when they were originally set to expire.

For more on privacy concerns with the major search engines:
- read more in this ComputerWorld article [1]