If you didn’t already know, Europeans take Internet privacy very seriously. Just ask the French who only last week proposed a possible “Right-to-Forget” law regarding the removal of unwanted or outdated Internet content. Now, it would appear that European Internet regulators have struck another blow for data privacy with Microsoft announcing yesterday that it will no longer store the IP addresses of Bing users for more than six months. This time frame places Bing ahead of the world’s leading search engine, Google, who have agreed to not delete, but anonymize IP data after nine months.

For a better understanding of Microsoft’s newly announced privacy changes, which the company says will take effect in the next 12 to 18 months, check out the chart below.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft’s move may put pressure on Google to follow-up with their own stand on consumer privacy.

From the article:

Although most search engines have significantly reduced the time they hold on to search logs since requests to do so by the European working group—comprising of all 27 national privacy officials—Mr. Vasallo said that there still remained a possibility that the European Union might want to regulate online privacy requirements.

Microsoft had earlier said that it was waiting for the industry to move together to reduce the time search queries are held to six months, but it said Tuesday it will now act unilaterally and called on rivals to follow suit.

Google maintains that it needs to keep queries for nine-months in order to improve search quality and to fight online fraud, such as companies artificially increasing the cost of online advertising, known as click fraud.

“Data from our search queries represents a crucial arm in our battle to protect the security of our services against hacks and fraud. It also represents a critical element allowing us to help users by innovating and improving the quality of our searches,” Google said in a statement.

Microsoft, meanwhile, is convinced it can “manage the search data” within the six-month time frame both in terms of improving the online search and fighting fraud, Mr. Vasallo said.

Data privacy has quickly become one of the most significant issues affecting the Internet industry, and how Microsoft, Google, and other major companies handle it will be important not just to their business, but to the overall security infrastructure of the web. We will see in the coming days if Google announces their own changes to their data retention policies in response to Microsoft’s change.