Brussels has waded into Google, Microsoft and Yahoo over the length of time they keep internet search records. The EU said that the three search outfits must limit the amount of time they keep Internet- search records to six months or justify the need for any longer storage periods.

European Union officials are looking at the case to see if the three are breaching EU data privacy laws. The Article 29 Data Protection Working Party has written to inform the three companies “their methods of making users’ search data anonymous” continue to be in breach of EU data protection rules.

Google, owner of the world’s largest search engine currently stores data for nine months. The group said that the outfit's “apparent lack of focus in data retention is concerning.”

The search engines might not be too concerned about miffing the EU. After all the body has been investigating them and moaning about this problem since 2008. They have cut the length of time they stored data considerably. At one time they tended to keep it for two years.

Google has a lot of reasons not to want to miff the EU, which is thinking of anti-trust investigations against the outfit. However it equally faces pressure from law enforcement agencies in the US which want to know everything about its citizens and for data to be kept.