Google, the dominant search engine in Europe, has its European headquarters in Dublin and the Irish Data Protection Commissioner will be tasked with overseeing new European guidelines on the how long the internet giant can store personal data connected to the millions of online searches it processes every day. The Article 29 Working Group of European privacy authorities met in Brussels last week to discuss the issue.

"We have a key interest in the opinion of the Article 29 Working Group because we have the European HQ of one of the biggest search engines based in Ireland, " said data protection commissioner Billy Hawkes who attended the top level meeting. "We have ongoing dialogue with Google on privacy issues and we would expect that Google and other search engines would comply with guidelines to be laid down by the working group in its opinion so that no enforcement action will be necessary."

A spokesman for Google said the company would continue to cooperate with the EU working group and enjoyed a good relationship with the Irish authorities. "If we're asked for more information we'll be happy to cooperate."

Earlier this year Google aimed to pre-empt privacy groups' criticism of its data warehousing policies when it unilaterally decided to reduce the period it holds personal search records from 24 months to 18 months.

This led to a search engine beauty parade with AOL pledging to anonymise data after 30 days, and ASK. com offering an internet search function that retains no record.

Earlier this year Commissioner Hawkes shared a platform with Google's privacy counsel Peter Fleischer at a talk to the company's Dublinbased staff. He said this was an informative talk designed to educate Google staffers on Irish laws.

Europe has the world's most stringent data protection rules, but Google and other search engines have also attracted criticism in America where Congress is currently examining search engine policies in light of its proposed acquisition of advertising firm DoubleClick.

It is understood new data EU guidelines for search engines will be recommended in early 2008, but last week's discussions did not touch on data collected by programs ancillary to the main search engine services.