The head of Europe's privacy watchdogs said that he is still in negotiations with Google about a major data retention dispute and is confident that the search giant will change its policies.
Google has claimed its data retention policy is forced on it by an EU law, but that it would keep identifiable customer data for 18 months even if that law did not exist.
Peter Schaar is Germany's Federal Data Protection Commissioner and Chairman of the group of European privacy regulators the Article 29 Working Party. He is negotiating with Google over its retention of logs of user activity combined with identifying internet protocol, or IP, addresses.
"We are discussing the item with Google, I'm not sure what will be the outcome, I am optimistic," he told OUT-LAW Radio.
When asked whether he really believed that Google would change its policies, he said: "they already changed as a result of our [demands], I think we are not at the end of the street".
A year ago Google stopped keeping IP-identified records indefinitely and restricted their retention to 18 months, citing European privacy concerns as a reason for the change.
Google and other search engine and content companies keep a record of what activity has taken place from individual IP addresses, including what searches have been requested in search engines.
Data protection officials have condemned the practice, claiming that it breaches privacy rules, which state that collected personal information must be deleted after it has been used.
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