Pesquisa da CNET News.com, How search engines rate on privacy, mostra que a briga das máquinas de busca pelo mercado está fazendo com que as empresas levem mais a sério a questão da privacidade. Vejam um resumo dos resultados nesse excerto:
“(…)The answers suggest that, based on the questions we asked, Ask.com was the most protective of user privacy. In fact, only Ask.com said it would not record what users type into its search engine. (Smaller search engines, including ixquick, said this as well, but we limited our survey to the five largest engines.) Ask.com also said it did not engage in behavioral targeting, which refers to the practice of offering advertisements based on previous searches. And the rest? Results were mixed. Google avoids behavioral targeting, but after 18 months it performs a partial anonymization of users’ Internet Protocol addresses–an action that’s not terribly privacy protective. Google dominates the search market: 53 percent of U.S. Web searches in June were performed on its site, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. Microsoft is better on the anonymization front. Peter Cullen, the company’s chief privacy strategist, said users’ Internet addresses and cookie values are “permanently and irreversibly” disassociated from the search terms after 18 months. But Microsoft does engage in behavioral targeting, while Google doesn’t. Yahoo and AOL were similarly mixed.”