Google will reduce the amount of time that “cookies” are installed on users’ computers to track their online habits, in a bid to address mounting concern over privacy.

The internet search giant said that “in the coming months” it will start to issue cookies that expire two years after a user visits its website, but they will be updated each time that they return. Google cookies last until 2038 at present.

Experts welcomed the decision to revisit what has become a totemic issue for privacy campaigners. However, it will have little impact on how Google’s “cookie monster” operates and the amount of personal information that it captures. According to Jim Harper, of the Technology Liberation Front: “A cookie reissued every two years until 2038 and beyond has the same tracking power as a cookie expiring 31 years’ hence.”

Cookies are small data files that are downloaded automatically to computers when a website is visited. They identify users on later visits and gather information on their behaviour and preferences. “Third-party cookies” can be used to track a consumer’s progress across several sites – valuable information for advertisers, but data that could be perceived as intrusive.

Google’s commercial ambitions rest on it acquiring massive amounts of data on its users. Cookies play a key part in its efforts to “personalise” its services for individual consumers, ultimately to better target online advertising.

Peter Fleischer, the group’s global privacy counsel, said: “After listening to feedback from users and privacy advocates, we’ve concluded it would be a good thing for privacy to significantly shorten the lifetime of our cookies.”

Google already holds a vast amount of personal information about its users, ranging from the contents of e-mail to credit card details. The information is held in “server farms”, the company’s digital data centres.

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