Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
1–10 of 171 posts
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#2I think this should be considered the original source instead?
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#3Why is a study required to know this? Google, surely, should make this known in their privacy policy?
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#4Even if I use an addon that deletes my cookies from Google every time I close the tab?
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#5Is anybody the least bit surprised? It’s been obvious forever that google has absolutely zero respect for privacy.
Yes, this can be rationalized as ‘improving search results’, and indeed the results may be better.
But, it’s also building a personal profile without consent, or indeed with implied lack of consent.
If google cared about privacy, they would simply offer people the option not to be tracked, and respect it.
They don’t.
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#6I'm the last one to say you shouldn't scrutinize what Google does, but this is complete non-news.
In the beginning, I was suspecting actively used logged-out cookies like Facebook infamously uses for example (try it, they're showing your face and keep tracking you all over the web). Reading on about differing search results in private mode, I was then expecting something like Google actually using IP + Fingerprint matching, which would be way more devious.
In the end, this was purely about Google showing a different page to everyone. Playing the devil's advocate, this is about the only way to escape the exploration/exploitation dilemma.
Is DuckDuckGo seriously complaining that Google is basically A/B testing everything, all the time? Because if that's the case, their data scientists should take some notes here.
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#7Even if I use an addon that deletes my cookies from Google every time I close the tab?
Google has more than cookies deployed to get after you.
There are a myriad number of tracking vectors they can use. (And to be fair, so can any of the other companies out there tracking everything.)
Deleting cookies is certainly a start, but it's not sufficient to maintain privacy.
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#8The study’s result seem to be that users often get unique results. That’s not the same as “personalized”, and it certainly isn’t evidence of “bias” as the spreadprivacy.org-link suggests.
A good faith interpretation would point to google running learning algorithms on their results. That would also seem to be a far better explanation for Google changing parts of the page layout, such as the position of news and video results.
The use of the term “bias” for describing differences search results also trips my conspiracy theory detectors.
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#9Am I missing something? Google gives me the creeps as much as it does to any sane person, but if I understand correctly, DDG is comparing just the variation of results on each page. This doesn't mean that you're still in the (same) bubble when you log out.
How about comparing the logged-in data with logged-out / private tab data? Did they find these two sets related? If not, G could be just implementing some sort of A/B testing on grand scale (learning from clicks and making search algorithm better).
Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
#10It sounds like they found a lot of variation but not that the differences are biased in any particular direction? Could this be random?
The use of "filter bubble" doesn't seem justified if it looks like random variation.