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Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds

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Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds

#51

Post by rdtsc »

I remember Paul Graham gave a keynote at one of the Pycons some years ago. It was about interesting ideas that you might want to work on in the future.

One idea was to build a search engine that returns unpersonalized results. He talked about how Google will be moving into a "it's true, if it's true for you" kind of world. His idea was that it will open new opportunities. I think DuckDuckGo is one example, and they've grown and are doing pretty well. I think a lot of it comes as a reaction to Google, Facebook and other such things.

"It's true, if it's true for you" is also a great phrase worth remembering. It describes so much about the current world and where things are headed, and why some things seemed to have gone off rails.

Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds

#52

Post by ur-whale »

rdtsc wrote: post #51

I remember Paul Graham gave a keynote at one of the Pycons some years ago. It was about interesting ideas that you might want to work on in the future. One idea was to build a search engine that returns unpersonalized results. He talked about how Google will be moving into a "it's true, if it's true for you" kind of world. His idea was that it will open new opportunities. I think DuckDuckGo is one example, and they'v…

While I have switched to DuckDuckGo a long time ago, there basically is no proof they're actually not doing exactly what Google does.

Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds

#53

Post by [deleted] »

nottorp wrote: post #30

The problem is, these "personalized results" have become mostly useless. For more technical (or simply specific) queries, Google seems to vomit useless only vaguely related links instead of, you know, pages that cover what i searched for. This does more to encourage me switching to some other search engine than any privacy concern.

[deleted]

Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds

#54

Post by netcan »

gnode wrote: post #47
netcan wrote: post #29

To me, constantly complaining about sites/companies doing this stuff or wanting laws to make them stop... It just feels silly and pointless. In the long term, companies will gather and use what data they have access to. Companies will tailor their UI, product, etc. in order to keep that data flowing. A ruleset based on permission and consent is not practical, unless the goal is "better paperwork." The solution (imho)…

> wanting laws to make them stop... It just feels silly and pointless. > The solution (imho) has to come from browser software or w3c. Generally in society when there is a natural motive for one party to wrong another, we use law to mitigate it. Technical solutions make sense, as there are always bad actors; people still lock their doors to deter burglars. But we don't expect to need to wear a suit of armour outside…

I'm not saying wrongdoing is fair game (obviously) or that laws are pointless. They just don't work for everything.

Laws' side effects can be as important as the straightforward intention. For example, the gdpr reporting requirements for data leaks is a good idea. It's nice that people can know data about them has leaked, but the bigger reason is the side effect... the transparency will improve security.

The side effect of consent/permission requirement is an army is of compliance lawyer and vendors. They make newspapers compliant by tweaking paperwork, popups and such... not by actually doing anything that improves privacy.

Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds

#55

Post by netcan »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #41
netcan wrote: post #29

To me, constantly complaining about sites/companies doing this stuff or wanting laws to make them stop... It just feels silly and pointless. In the long term, companies will gather and use what data they have access to. Companies will tailor their UI, product, etc. in order to keep that data flowing. A ruleset based on permission and consent is not practical, unless the goal is "better paperwork." The solution (imho)…

> To me, constantly complaining about sites/companies doing this stuff or wanting laws to make them stop... It just feels silly and pointless. ... companies will gather and use what data they have access to Yet every time there's an equifax or quora data breach at the top of the front page the consensus is almost always that companies should get less data, should keep it for less time, and end users should push back…

... self reporting data leaks is "the good part" of gdpr that I mentioned in my caveat. :) I think that's important, effective and in bureaucratic.

The attempt to increase formal contract making between website and user... that's the part I find frustrating.

Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds

#56

Post by anoncake »

adrianmonk wrote: post #48
nottorp wrote: post #30

The problem is, these "personalized results" have become mostly useless. For more technical (or simply specific) queries, Google seems to vomit useless only vaguely related links instead of, you know, pages that cover what i searched for. This does more to encourage me switching to some other search engine than any privacy concern.

That's a separate issue, but a real one. Practically speaking, many non-technical users _do_ want to formulate their query in an imprecise, sloppy manner and have the search engine figure it out. Programmers are capable of and accustomed to putting a lot of care and precision into exactly how they communicate (especially when communicating with a computer), but regular people don't usually do that. They may not even…

Even worse: " manual". I don't google that because I like reading manuals in general.

Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds

#58

Post by godelski »

rc_kas wrote: post #57

Well .. they certainly do a shitty job at personalizing my results. These days I can never find what I want on Google. I've resorted to using other search tools (github search, reddit search, stack overflow search, ddg, etc)

I feel like this has happened everywhere. YouTube included.

Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds

#59

Post by godelski »

nottorp wrote: post #39
basil-rash wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had actually forgotten about those until just now. I use Bing for most of my searching (I fall back to Google in the semi-rare cases where Bing doesn't work), and fake answer sites don't seem to be as prevalent on Bing. Maybe those sites tailor their SEO to Google's algorithms? Or maybe I've just grown numb to their presence.

Fake answers are another problem, I'm talking about stuff like Google dropping a word from my query because it feels there aren't enough results that include it. Edit because I can't reply any more: As dsfyu404ed says below, it tends to drop the central term of the query, making the results 100% useless. Not that they're particularly useful even if it doesn't do that...

I've observed that too. Then force the words to be there with quotes, finding that I still get plenty of resume. Which seems weird to me, because most people don't travel to the second page. I'd rather have an exact result than more pages.

But then again, it doesn't seem like a simple problem and one that has companies in either way.

Re: Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds

#60

Post by Wowfunhappy »

ur-whale wrote: post #52
rdtsc wrote: post #51

I remember Paul Graham gave a keynote at one of the Pycons some years ago. It was about interesting ideas that you might want to work on in the future. One idea was to build a search engine that returns unpersonalized results. He talked about how Google will be moving into a "it's true, if it's true for you" kind of world. His idea was that it will open new opportunities. I think DuckDuckGo is one example, and they'v…

While I have switched to DuckDuckGo a long time ago, there basically is no proof they're actually not doing exactly what Google does.

You're asking for proof of a negative.

DuckDuckGo just put out a post criticizing Google for personalizing search results. They're a small company without many resources, and privacy has been their primary selling point from the get-go. Yes, DuckDuckGo could also be personalizing their own results, but if they were and people found out, there's risk of a significant outcry. Until I see evidence to the contrary, I'm inclined to assume good faith.

See also: discussions around "but how do we know for sure that Apple has better data privacy than Google?"

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