Google's cookies will now go stale

Google makes a minor tweak to their cookies. You still control how cookies are stored on your machine, if you're one of the 14% of web-surfers who actually pays attention to that stuff.

Oh man, Google and their privacy concerns. Well at least they're doing something, but I'm sure privacy groups will say it's not enough. Whatever.

You may remember Google now anonymizes their search server logs after 18 months. Now they've announced that they've changed default setting for the cookie they drop on your machine. Before the cookie was valid until 2038 (target year for total world domination by the ant overlords), but now it will expire after two years.

So how does this affect you? It doesn't. Almost all major websites use cookies. Without them, being online would be a very tedious process. If you use Google, it drops a cookie on your machine so Google can remember your preferences (language, safe search settings, etc). If you don't visit Google again for two years, your cookie expires and you'll have to reset your settings. If you do visit Google, oh let's say, daily, then your cookie is refreshed. Or said another way, there's no change to your Google experience.

I'm not really sure how this protects someone's privacy, but then I've never understood why people think there is such a thing as "online privacy." I guess they think that since they can surf from home, where other private things happen, then web-surfing is inherently private. It's not, of course. Everything you do on a computer and on a network can be tracked, recorded and traced. The whole point of the Internet was to connect people so they can share information and collaborate, not hide behind screen names and IP spoofing.

So it is good that Google is addressing these concerns, except the people with the concerns aren't the type who would pipe down over this.