Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're free to opt out at any time: http://www.google.com/privacy/ads/
AFAIK this doesn't shut off the search leakage in the referrer header.
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DuckDuckGo Challenges Google on Privacy (With a Billboard in San Francisco)
51–60 of 224 posts
Re: DuckDuckGo Challenges Google on Privacy (With a Billboard in San Francisco)
#52Is the whole privacy on search thing really a big issue? I, for one, want Google to be all Orwellian on me because it will mean better search results. I had a scenario like this a few days ago when I googled for "fabric" -- Being a Python developer I was looking for http://fabfile.org and it shows up as the second result while logged in. If I'm not, it won't show up. This may be the outlier state of mind on HN, but I…
Ok, maybe, if it worked. But Google results have been tanking in quality. So now I vote for privacy. DuckDuckGo gives me quality results without being creepy.
Re: DuckDuckGo Challenges Google on Privacy (With a Billboard in San Francisco)
#53It's not just the privacy angle, DDG also returns much more relevant results for my searches. YMMV.
Re: DuckDuckGo Challenges Google on Privacy (With a Billboard in San Francisco)
#54Not knowing which keywords referred visitors would be terribly annoying to webmasters. Unless you're using dodgy 3rd party advertisers, I don't see what's so bad about aggregating referrer data. I have a feeling Google might be keen to hold onto their duck.com domain a little longer :)
Yeah, unless someone registers for your website, your not going to be able to do much more than tag a search term with an IP so you can know that someone arrived with search term x and did y on the website, but nothing about who that person is.
It depends which side of the fence your on really, if you use this kind of data to improve your business your for it. If you operate in areas that don't rely on it at all your more likely to be against it.
Re: DuckDuckGo Challenges Google on Privacy (With a Billboard in San Francisco)
#55A quick (and perhaps slightly offtopic) question, what's DDG's revenue model? Is it just an experiment right now, and if so how is Gabriel funding this?
Re: DuckDuckGo Challenges Google on Privacy (With a Billboard in San Francisco)
#56That's awesome! Does anyone (Gabriel...) know if there has been a noticeable bump in traffic as a result?
Check here in the coming days: http://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html
Re: DuckDuckGo Challenges Google on Privacy (With a Billboard in San Francisco)
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is also a slightly different case - google passing on your search terms to the website that you click through to. You may trust google with knowing that you searched for "naked bieber pics", but you may not want other websites also knowing your search habits.
Even if the site owner doesn't know that the referring url contained the search term "naked beiber pics" they still know you visited their page which most likely contains "naked beiber pics".
Exactly, the privacy issue around http referrers is a red herring.
Re: DuckDuckGo Challenges Google on Privacy (With a Billboard in San Francisco)
#58A quick (and perhaps slightly offtopic) question, what's DDG's revenue model? Is it just an experiment right now, and if so how is Gabriel funding this?
He has an about me page somewhere, but he sold a business a while back for a relatively large amount and I assume he could live off that forever, so money certainly isn't a concern for him.
Edit: found the info, $10m - http://investor.untd.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=328835
Re: DuckDuckGo Challenges Google on Privacy (With a Billboard in San Francisco)
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would prefer the web to be better classified and less "guessing". For my queries google has been guessing wrong most of the time and putting results of things i didnt search for in the top results page. With the bangs and the zero-click duck aproaches what I think is a really good solution, for 'fabric' you get : http://duckduckgo.com/?q=fabric Which has in the zero click info all the meanings (including the python…
I agree, when I search for "fabric" I want to see the same results (more or less) on whichever computer I'm on - logged in to Google or not. If I want information on the fabric python library I just search for "python fabric" - works on DuckDuckGo as noted above and also works just fine on Google.
"I want to see the same results (more or less) on whichever computer I'm on"
Even if only to stay aware of where your sites (and those of clients) are going to be positioned when customers search for them.
Re: DuckDuckGo Challenges Google on Privacy (With a Billboard in San Francisco)
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
AFAIK this doesn't shut off the search leakage in the referrer header.
That's a feature of how the internet works at an architectural level. How exactly is that Google's fault? If you don't want referral headers to be sent from one website to another, use HTTPS, or turn it off in your browser.
Unfortunately, normal people don't know how to turn them off or use the https version. Google could do a lot of things to make this easier.
The best would be to just prevent ad networks from collecting this personal information altogether. The only reason I've heard against doing so is that webmasters need search terms for SEO, but they can get them via Webmaster tools.
Failing that, they could make a setting in the http version that turns off the headers. They could also make a setting that defaults to https. And they could make https easier to get to. Currently you can't even do https://google.com/ (you have to type in www.)