BRUSSELS, Belgium – The EU's top justice official on Thursday welcomed a recent move by Google Inc. to cut the time it keeps users' search details.

Jacques Barrot, the EU's justice and home affairs commissioner said Google's announcement earlier this week was “a good step in the right direction.”

He said however, Google's move to cut its retention of data logs from 18 months to nine should be trimmed further to six months.

Barrot said “awareness and compliance with fundamental human rights are of pivotal importance” for Internet service providers such as Google.

Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy adviser, said the company would work closely with EU data and privacy supervisors “to set the standard on respecting privacy.”

Google announced Tuesday that it would apply the new privacy changes to its sites worldwide. EU data-protection officials have questioned the need for search engines to keep data on users' searches.

An EU report in April on search engines recommended changes to their practices to meet European data retention and privacy rules.

Google had long argued that its retention period complied with EU data privacy rules, but it moved in 2007 to limit data logged from searches to 18 months.

Competitors Microsoft and Yahoo have also limited the time they retain such data. Microsoft keeps search data for 18 months and Yahoo 13 months.