EU: Search Engines Under EU Rules (PhysOrg.com)

European data privacy regulators said Thursday that Internet search engines based outside Europe must also comply with EU rules on how a person's Internet address or search history is stored.

Germany's data protection commissioner Peter Scharr, who has just stepped down as the head of the group, said last month that IP addresses, a string of numbers that identifies a computer, should generally be regarded as personal information.

Treating IP addresses as personal information would have implications for how search engines record the data they need to understand search patterns and correctly bill online advertisers for the number of times their ad is viewed.