Bowing to pressure in Europe, Microsoft said Tuesday that it would redesign the worldwide

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operation of its online search engine, Bing, to eliminate all data collected on users after six months.

AMicrosoft vice president and associate general counsel, John Vassallo, said the company would introduce the changes over the next 18 months, aiming to satisfy a European advisory group that has been critical of the way search engines collect and retain data on individuals for advertising purposes.

In 2008, a panel of national privacy regulators from each European Union country asked Microsoft, Google and Yahoo to eliminate such data, including a computer’s unique identification number, location and the text typed into search fields, after six months.

Like other search engines, Microsoft had been keeping user data for more than 18 months. Last year, Microsoft changed its policy tomake the individual’s Internet Protocol address anonymous after six months.

So far, only Microsoft has agreed to comply fully with the panel’s request.

Google and Yahoo have said they need to hold on to some data longer than six months to refine the functioning of the search engines.

The panel, known as the Article 29 Working Group, held a hearing with representatives of the search engine companies last February, and had given each until the end of January to respond.

‘‘Wesupport what the Article 29Working Group is doing,’’ Mr. Vassallo said at news conference in Brussels. ‘‘That is why we are making this change. We call on our competitors to do the same.’’ Europe is the world’s largest market for Internet searches, accounting for 32 percent of online queries, according to comScore, a market research firm.

Asia-Pacific had 31 percent and North America had 22 percent of searches according a comScore report in July.

Google has a 67 percent share of the global search market, according to com- Score, but about an 80 percent share in Europe, where Microsoft has only 2 percent.

Google and Yahoo were not initially available for comment.

Mr. Vassallo said Microsoft’s decision to conform to European requests had been meant to avert possible regulation.

‘‘It is possible that the European Union will take a position to regulate this one way or the other,’’ Mr. Vassallo said.

‘‘Thatwould need a high level of responsibility from industry. I hope by taking this example we are showing the way. If that happens, we will see less risk of a new regulation.’’