Google Inc announced this week its decision to reduce the period of information retention from 18 to 9 months. The company’s decision comes amid growing pressure from European and U.S. policymakers and regulators to hold the IP addresses of its consumers for a shorter period.

The giant search engine-based company reduced its information retention policy last year as well. Google said it will also start to make the data collected through its Google Suggests feature anonymous within 24 hours.

Until March 2007 when it first introduced the privacy policy, Google kept the collected data for an indefinite period of time. Google acknowledged that making IP addresses anonymous is better for the privacy, but the decision was also difficult to take and implement because the collected routine server log data is a key factor of improvement for the company.

European and U.S. regulators have been pressuring Google during the past year and a half to change its data retaining policy especially. The policymakers’ main concern is linked to the massive growth of the company and the fact that the online lives of more and more people are reached by Google, which might soon become an online Big Brother.

However, Google responded to regulators’ demands regarding its policy by arguing that the loss of data reduces the amount of utility the company receives from it.

"The problem is difficult to solve because the characteristics of the data that make it useful to prevent fraud, for example, are the very characteristics that also introduce some privacy risk," the company wrote on its blog.