GOOGLE HAS halved the amount of time it stores personal data gathered from its users' web surfing habits, a move aimed at improving its privacy policies.

Google used to store such data for 18 months, but has now trimmed that duration to nine months.

Nicole Wong, Google's deputy general counsel, told a meeting of computer industry privacy experts at Microsoft's Silicon Valley offices yesterday that her company planned to "anonymise" the computer addresses of its users more quickly.

"We're significantly shortening our previous 18-month retention policy to address regulatory concerns and to take another step to improve privacy for our users," Google officials said in a blog post.

Peter Cullen, chief privacy strategist for Microsoft, said Google's move was done in response to pressure from European regulators and industry rivals.

Mr Cullen said that, until a year and a half ago, Google kept personally identifiable information about its web users for an indefinite amount of time.

Separately, it emerged yesterday that the US justice department hired top lawyer Sanford Litvack for a possible anti-trust challenge to Google's proposed advertising partnership with Yahoo. - (Reuters)