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A European advisory body has recommended that internet search engines should delete users’ personal data.

The European Commission’s Article 29 Data Protection Working Party report has told how search engines are unclear on their data protection policies and advised that all collected personal data should be deleted after six months, the BBC has reported.

The recommendation would mean that collected data could only be used for the purpose of searching.

If the commission accepts the request it could lead to conflict with popular American search engine companies.

Google and Yahoo! carry a policy of rendering all users’ data anonymous after a period of 18 months. MSN’s policy comes into action at 13 months.

In a statement Peter Fleischer of Google’s global privacy counsel said: ‘Google takes privacy incredibly seriously; protecting our users’ privacy is at the heart of all our products.’

Another obligation set out in the report was the obtainment of personal consent from users to allow their data to be uses in non-search services. It also asked search engines to give users clear information on the data they intended to collect.

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Internet search engine giant Google has created a tool that lets users create simple, web-based presentations.

Coming as part of Google Docs, which includes word processing and spreadsheet features, the new presentation capability has been widely seen as a competitor with Microsoft’s popular PowerPoint tool.

The presentations service in Google Docs allows more than one user to view the slides while a moderator controls the presentation.

Google has reminded users, however, that the tool is still in ’simple, early stages’ and will change as time goes on.

‘Putting documents in the cloud surrounded by easy to use features for collaboration and sharing can save people hours of inefficiency and frustration and even enable new ways of working together,’ commented Sam Schillace, director of engineering for Google Docs.

The search engine also announced this week that it is launching its AdSense service, which displays targeted ads on websites, for publishers with websites developed specifically for mobile phones.

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