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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

#131

Post by garysahota93 »

singingboyo wrote: post #124
garysahota93 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a secret, but I don't think we're doing enough to keep this on the forefront of people's minds. Every time I hear this, I am shocked! Only to then remember I already knew this but somehow let it slide...

I mean, what's the difference between this and customizing billboard ads based on where the billboard is? IMO the issue is not google using IP-based location info. The issue (if there really is one) is people assuming/believing the internet hides their location.

hmm, that's a very interesting point. I guess that famous saying of "if you're not paying, then YOU are the product" kinda falls into play here, huh?

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

#132

Post by guix992 »

What's been a shame is that there is still no open source Search Engine despite this being a "solved" problem. Like not even something like there is a docker image that you throw at your cluster that gets you faster and faster search results. That's the real shame.

We should've commidified the core of search engine by now with programmatic and API access as commonplace and yet here we are where search engine software is still dominated by proprietary services.

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

#133

Post by Gaelan »

guix992 wrote: post #132

What's been a shame is that there is still no open source Search Engine despite this being a "solved" problem. Like not even something like there is a docker image that you throw at your cluster that gets you faster and faster search results. That's the real shame. We should've commidified the core of search engine by now with programmatic and API access as commonplace and yet here we are where search engine software…

I’m guessing that it’s impractical to self-host something big enough to be useful.

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

#134

Post by wtfstatists »

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…

Safety/Quality regulations reduces choices and quantity. This hits poor the most, as they can no longer buy inferior but cheap products and services. See China.

Instead regulations should be focus on reducing scam and misleading offerings. If someone wants to buy/use despite knowing the risks, let him.

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

#135

Post by guix992 »

Gaelan wrote: post #133
guix992 wrote: post #132

What's been a shame is that there is still no open source Search Engine despite this being a "solved" problem. Like not even something like there is a docker image that you throw at your cluster that gets you faster and faster search results. That's the real shame. We should've commidified the core of search engine by now with programmatic and API access as commonplace and yet here we are where search engine software…

I’m guessing that it’s impractical to self-host something big enough to be useful.

I don't believe that is a good enough limitation in this day and age of docker and kubernetes.

You take the search engine docker image and keep scaling the number of nodes that are running it in the cluster till your search result time is fast enough for you.

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

#136

Post by iamnothere »

klodolph wrote: post #110
anoncake wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You can try putting double-quotes around the model number. This is Google’s syntax for exact matches. For a good example, try searching for NYC both with and without quotes around it. Without quotes, you will get a much larger set of results where Google is trying to figure out what you mean when you say NYC… including results for New York City. This doesn’t always work exactly but in general if you are looking for e…

Double quotes keep getting less and less effective -- Google is progressively ignoring them more often when similar results are available. Worse, I've seen Google tell me that a term in double quotes simply doesn't exist on the web, when other engines will return many thousands of results. I seriously doubt that the competition has a bigger index!

This is what finally put me on using DDG.

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

#137

Post by troydavis »

Here's where Google (barely) exposes an option called "Signed-out search activity" retention: https://www.google.com/history/privacyadvisor/search

Make sure to access it while not signed in to Google, but using a browser mode which persists cookies (ie, not incognito mode). The actual control is https://www.google.com/history/optout

Here's the equivalent for YouTube signed-out watch and search history: https://www.youtube.com/feed/history . Click "Clear All Watch History," then click "Pause Watch History," then choose "Search history" and repeat those 2 steps again.

Do all of this from each device you use Google or YouTube from.

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

#138

Post by _yawn »

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…

> They may not even be capable of it.

Come on now...

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

#139

Post by shakna »

tmaly wrote: post #78
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…

It use to be that DuckDuckGo would let you contribute to the search engine years back providing interfaces to various 3rd party data. I am not sure if that is still the case? Has anyone written anything for DuckDuckGo?

They stopped August 31st, 2017 [0], however they still have several open source efforts [1]

[0] https://duckduckhack.com/

[1] https://github.com/duckduckgo/

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

#140

Post by bo1024 »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #127
harshvladha wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between Signed out, and Incognito (no cookies)! + People generally tend to miss the point that Incognito doesn't prevent sharing the IP of the user. + I think DuckDuckGo's study missed out using VPN in their analysis. i.e., SignedIn vs Incognito vs (Incognito+VPN)

Even with a VPN it's possible to somewhat reliably fingerprint browsers, no? You can check user agent, screen size, installed plug-ins, etc.

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