{"id":714,"date":"2018-03-11T09:13:18","date_gmt":"2018-03-11T13:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/tpri\/?p=714"},"modified":"2018-04-14T16:39:18","modified_gmt":"2018-04-14T20:39:18","slug":"search-engines-and-data-retention-implications-for-privacy-and-antitrust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/tpri\/2018\/03\/11\/search-engines-and-data-retention-implications-for-privacy-and-antitrust\/","title":{"rendered":"Search Engines and Data Retention: Implications for Privacy and Antitrust"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Lesley Chiou and Catherine Tucker<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This paper investigates whether larger quantities of historical data affect a firm&#8217;s ability to\u00a0maintain market share in Internet search. We study whether the length of time that search engines\u00a0retained their server logs affected the apparent accuracy of subsequent searches. Our analysis\u00a0exploits changes in these policies prompted by the actions of policymakers. We find little\u00a0empirical evidence that reducing the length of storage of past search engine searches affected the\u00a0accuracy of search. Our results suggest that the possession of historical data confers less of an\u00a0advantage in market share than is sometimes supposed. Our results also suggest that limits on\u00a0data retention may impose fewer costs in instances where overly long data retention leads to\u00a0privacy concerns such as an individual&#8217;s &#8220;right to be forgotten.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/tpri\/2017\/10\/11\/does-big-data-favor-big-companies\/\">Research Summary<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ssrn.com\/abstract=3038625\">PDF<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lesley Chiou and Catherine Tucker <\/p>\n<p>Does Big Data give large companies an unfair competitive advantage? New machine learning technologies depend on access to large amounts of data. This means that large companies might be able to use their huge stores of data to provide better products and services than smaller rivals and startups. Or not&#8230;<br \/>\n<br \/><b><a href=\"http:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/tpri\/2017\/10\/11\/does-big-data-favor-big-companies\/\">Research Summary<\/a>: Does Big Data favor big companies?    <\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13606,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,20],"tags":[25],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/tpri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/tpri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/tpri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/tpri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13606"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/tpri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=714"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/tpri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":870,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/tpri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714\/revisions\/870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/tpri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/tpri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/tpri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}