A good overview of Google’s recent privacy policy announcement.

In short:

•  ”Google’s adjustment was that instead of retaining user search data for “as long as it is useful,” now the company will keep the information for at least 18 months and no longer than 24 months.
• For ordinary Internet users, the most useful information out of last week’s discussion was the fact that, under certain circumstances, you can stop Google from collecting some of this data to begin with. This trick works only when you are logged into a Google service, like Gmail or Google Talk. Otherwise, you have no way to control Google’s data collection; its logs are automatically generated every time someone does a search”.