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Google tracks you. We don't. An illustrated guide

donttrack.us

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Re: Google tracks you. We don't. An illustrated guide

#51

Post by joakin »

Kadin wrote: post #44
joakin wrote: post #32

Here goes some feedback, hopefully we can gather some suggestions for Gabriel instead of saying 'Encrypted Google' all the time... In my opinion (using my designer side) the site lacks basic design, the text is well written, and the images make it really easy to read, but its missing some eye candy. Something to do would be structure each argument as a page/slide, and make the reading more like slides or a book. In m…

Ugh, disagree. I detest the online-slideshow thing, and often wish people would just take their "slides" and put them on the same page and just let me scroll. Whenever I see someone doing a slideshow-type presentation, my immediate assumption is that they are just dragging me through the process so they can get more eyeballs for their advertising. (Cf. much of Cracked.com and other "Top x Lists".) There are things th…

Ok, fair opinion, but if you look at the google website, It doesnt look neither spammy nor disgusting (at least for the regular user (i think). Its clean, informative, and fun to use.

Anyway, A/B test should give him the answer to which is the best way to aproach the Google non-techy crowd

Re: Google tracks you. We don't. An illustrated guide

#52

Post by Groxx »

rumpelstiltskin wrote: post #41
Groxx wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a very unusual practice So I was close. They even admit the odds were in my favor. Thanks for the fact!

Close, but wrong.

Which is why I edited my top post. No need to spread inaccurate information.

Since you're going on the offensive, a defensive move might be in order: no, I wasn't. I said "odds are", not "DDG does", because I didn't know for sure and did not intend to claim to. The odds are in my favor, the fact is an aberration on otherwise almost-uniform behavior by search providers.

Re: Google tracks you. We don't. An illustrated guide

#53

Post by [deleted] »

Groxx wrote: post #24
nopal wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other info, like your IP address...is still stored. Odds are DDG does this too, as it's mostly useful for overall statistics. You could have checked this assertion by reading DDG's plain-language privacy policy: When you access DuckDuckGo (or any Web site), your Web browser automatically sends information about your computer, e.g. your User agent and IP address. Because this information could be used to link you to y…

> This is a very unusual practice So I was close. They even admit the odds were in my favor. Thanks for the fact!

[deleted]

Re: Google tracks you. We don't. An illustrated guide

#54

Post by joakin »

epi0Bauqu wrote: post #47
Kadin wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, disagree. I detest the online-slideshow thing, and often wish people would just take their "slides" and put them on the same page and just let me scroll. Whenever I see someone doing a slideshow-type presentation, my immediate assumption is that they are just dragging me through the process so they can get more eyeballs for their advertising. (Cf. much of Cracked.com and other "Top x Lists".) There are things th…

Yes, I wanted to keep the lowdef look, though I'm happy to entertain any design changes within that look.

What about a scrolling format but more visually appealing? Something like benthebodyguard.com [1]

In light colors avoiding the darkness but funnier to scroll

[1] http://benthebodyguard.com/

Re: Google tracks you. We don't. An illustrated guide

#55

Post by edw519 »

epi0Bauqu wrote: post #45
aw3c2 wrote: post #33

That site turned me off. I am using DDG as my primary search engine for many months now. I really dislike the style and "atmosphere" of that site. The images are seemingly unordered and could use some borders. The images of the dog biting the women or the predator disgust me. Then some "motivationals" and memes that do not help the case. This site gave me mental stress (the left-alignment of varied sized text and ima…

Truly sorry about that -- of course not the intention. I tried to keep it as simple as possible, and didn't iterate much on the design. I'm open to design changes if anyone has any concrete ideas. Personally I hate disgusting images, and didn't think those two rose to that level. If anyone has suggestions for equally good replacements, I'm fine with that too.

Truly sorry about that...

Whenever anyone begins with "That site turned me off," it may be a good idea to hear their feedback, but it does not necessarily follow that they deserve an apology or that you need to act upon that feedback. I think you're dealing with an outlier, and we already know what trying to please them can lead to.

If anyone has suggestions for equally good replacements, I'm fine with that too.

Don't change a thing.

As Edward Everett said to Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg: "I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes."

Re: Google tracks you. We don't. An illustrated guide

#56

Post by benatkin »

aw3c2 wrote: post #33

That site turned me off. I am using DDG as my primary search engine for many months now. I really dislike the style and "atmosphere" of that site. The images are seemingly unordered and could use some borders. The images of the dog biting the women or the predator disgust me. Then some "motivationals" and memes that do not help the case. This site gave me mental stress (the left-alignment of varied sized text and ima…

The only thing that really annoyed me was the proper spelling of "now" in the lolcat.

Re: Google tracks you. We don't. An illustrated guide

#58

Post by notahacker »

joakin wrote: post #32

Here goes some feedback, hopefully we can gather some suggestions for Gabriel instead of saying 'Encrypted Google' all the time... In my opinion (using my designer side) the site lacks basic design, the text is well written, and the images make it really easy to read, but its missing some eye candy. Something to do would be structure each argument as a page/slide, and make the reading more like slides or a book. In m…

Ironically your example site is not only a Google property, but also raises a "this website is asking to store data on your computer" security warning and runs horribly slowly in my browser (maybe I'm guilty of having too many tabs open, but maybe they're guilty of optimising for Chrome...). For casual browsing I'd much rather scroll than click the right hand side of the page and wait whilst Firefox thinks about running a page curl animation. Even with it working properly in Chrome I'd rather not be slowed down like that...

For Gabriel's intended audience (presumably social media) the simplicity and silly cat memes probably work perfectly well without attempting to make it beautiful.

For me, all the FUD simply makes me think "hang on, even if I use DuckDuckgo the site that built the Herpes landing page, optimised it for health advertisers and probably has Facebook widgets too gets all that information, and is far more likely to sell their data than Google...". I don't think HN is the target audience for that page.

Given the recent spate of articles on how scraper sites that DDG blocks pollute Google results, I'd think a similar info page about how DDG's spam blacklist would go down nicely now though...

Re: Google tracks you. We don't. An illustrated guide

#59

Post by Matt_Cutts »

epi0Bauqu wrote: post #39
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #35

The first sentence when I stripped out the pictures was "When you search Google, and click on a link, your search term is sent to that site, along with your browser & computer info, which can often uniquely identify you." Referrers are a part of the way the web has worked since before Google existed. They're a browser-level feature more than something related to specific websites. But if referrers bother you, just us…

The referrer header is indeed a reality of HTTP, but that doesn't mean we can't and shouldn't work around that reality and correct for it, if it has real privacy implications, which I think it definitely does. By getting rid of that header I think we take away a lot of private context, i.e. the actual search terms that landed you on that page, which in and of themselves can provide a lot of background into what was p…

Yup, that was the same day we announced SSL search, which prevents referrers to http sites.

I don't begrudge you trying to make privacy a selling point for DDG, but donttrack.us felt like trying to paint Google with a pretty broad brush. Honestly, it reminded me of when Privacy International decided to give Google a worse privacy rating than any other company. Here's how I responded to Privacy International at the time: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/privacy-international-loses-al...

The fact is that Google has a good history of supporting privacy, from fighting overly broad subpoenas from the DOJ to SSL Search to creating a browser plugin to opt out of personalized advertising: http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/plugin/pluginfaq.html .

Re: Google tracks you. We don't. An illustrated guide

#60

Post by epi0Bauqu »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #59
epi0Bauqu wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The referrer header is indeed a reality of HTTP, but that doesn't mean we can't and shouldn't work around that reality and correct for it, if it has real privacy implications, which I think it definitely does. By getting rid of that header I think we take away a lot of private context, i.e. the actual search terms that landed you on that page, which in and of themselves can provide a lot of background into what was p…

Yup, that was the same day we announced SSL search, which prevents referrers to http sites. I don't begrudge you trying to make privacy a selling point for DDG, but donttrack.us felt like trying to paint Google with a pretty broad brush. Honestly, it reminded me of when Privacy International decided to give Google a worse privacy rating than any other company. Here's how I responded to Privacy International at the ti…

I really wasn't trying to paint with a broad brush, but instead concentrate on very specific things that I think the average person doesn't know about.

Personally, as you can gather, I don't think SSL search is enough (or browser plugins). The average person doesn't know it exists and so it essentially doesn't "exist" for most people. If you made it the default, or did something like what we did by dropping the referrer header, I think it becomes moot (at least the first sentence).

I'm really not trying to say Google is all bad or anything. In fact, I use a lot of Google services myself, e.g. Gmail. And I know you take privacy very seriously. However, the ad networks and other aggregators are starting to do some pretty scary stuff, and so I think you need to do more faster to catch up, or stay ahead of them in the privacy arena.

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