How to remake cookies from scratch:
8 bits = 1 byte of a number 0-9
Place in an uncovered Google and re-bake to recover.
Google supposes that Joe Average European Commissioned public is a great un-scrubbed naivete.

a little leaven cakes!

I guess this is why they make the big bucks.

There are two meanings to "last 8 bits". One would be the only 8 bits that remain. The other would be the 8 bits that appear last in the decimal form of the IP address.

It seems that what Google is saying is that even after 18 months, all they will remove is the last 8 bits. After 9 months, they'll modify some of those 8 bits (perhaps, say, randomly flipping 3 of them, perhaps obscuring the last 2, we don't know).

All said, this is very, very little from Google.

Now, you can configure your browser not to keep cookies across sessions. You can use proxies. You can do all kinds of things to obscure your private information. But the problem is that these things have a cost and you often don't know that you need privacy until something happens.

Your searches on poisons and chemistry may have been for only your own personal interest. But if you later find out someone's trying to frame you for murder, you may suddenly care very much whether they can be traced to you.

I imagine they also save your computer processor number if it's there, your screen resolution, O/S, etc, etc - quite a bit of extra data to help make the connection if they feel like it.

Just think of Google as a continual, effortless consumer survey. All they want to know is what it will take to trigger your purchase response for more goods and services, so they can keep increasing their ad rates.

It would also help if you'd use both Google Search and Gmail for a little cross-referencing, but so far some of you haven't been playing along.

Excuse me but since the cookies are on YOUR computer and are manageable by YOU it's not them retaining it if it's still there after 9 months but you, simply set the google domains (make sure you got all of them) to only allow session cookies and they are gone each time you close your browser.
But yeah it's interesting, but the article is a bit confusing, to quote:
"after 18 months we remove the last eight bits in the IP address and change the cookie information."
Now aren't the last 8 bits the ones you claim are deleted first? They are in my definition of last, if you have an IP 111.222.333.444 I'd call 444 the last bits/byte, in which case they delete others first.

Anyone want to bet the nsa and its equivalents have a daily full back up of all worldwide traffic in detail just waiting to be searched on demand, backed up forever....?

This is redundant for a google power user all this info is available if you have the storage space or the inclination which the nsa cia interpol etc certainly do.

the moral of this story, stop thinking big brother is not watching your every move and behave :P

All your user websurfing data are belong to us

Ok.... so how can anyone keep privacy being online? It's almost impossible. And anyway if you use google, what prevents him from saving your data? It keep on every site you visit a privacy policy, has anyone ever read it? And EVEN if you read, what if they simply troll it trhu the window out and keep on milking your data for eternity? What will prevent that? Privacy is an UTOPIA.

"The address-block belonging to the user's Internet Service Provider (ISP) is certainly still identified by the data retained."

Thousands of people are connected to same ISP, so it doesn't quite matter.