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The world needs more search engines

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Re: The world needs more search engines

#331

Post by JaRail »

Terretta wrote: post #148
jefftk wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think Google Search still knows who you are when you search in Incognito mode? (Or, in Firefox, if you open a private browsing window.) How would it know? There are advertising companies that use fingerprinting for ad targeting, but Google doesn't. (Disclosure: I work at Google on ads, speaking only for myself)

How does it know to offer (in incognito mode) a list of your accounts you might want to re-login to? (Not always, but often enough to raise an eyebrow.) Seems like a pretty good reason to think it still knows who you are. As to how that works, you tell us.

Chrome is linked to your google accounts and saves your account auth tokens. When you use incognito, it doesn't immediately send that info. However, it does offer to sign you in. This is different from remembering login/passwords.

Re: The world needs more search engines

#332

Post by enitihas »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #313
enitihas wrote: post #305

I don't get the point. Doesn't the world already have search engines. Bing, Yandex, DuckDuckGo. If the argument is these are not popular, then that is surely not Google's fault. If the argument is Google's brand is more entrenched in the minds of consumers, then it applies to all sorts of companies and everything should be broken up, like Coke, since the world needs more sugar water. Search engines, unlike social net…

I agree mostly, but there's a little more to it. Google Search is pretty well embedded into Android. You can use Baidu or Yandex or Bing / DuckDuckGo on an Android phone, but there's substantially more friction. Considering mobile is now more than 50% of search traffic and Android is 80% of devices, that's close to 40% of all searches basically going to Google for free. Combine that with the fact that Google is embed…

Why do you think Google is embedded into Chrome? I use ddg easily with chrome, and as far as I remember, chrome allows you to change your search engine to anything, even a nobody site, as oppposed to Safari, which only allows selection from a fixed list of 4 on my Mac, so I can't use Yandex as my default.

Desktop is dominated by windows, where bing search is embedded in the start menu, from where it is non trivial to remove it, and changing it to something else is not even possible.

How is there more friction on using another search engine on Android. What other platform has an even lower friction in switching search engines?

Re: The world needs more search engines

#333

Post by jefftk »

sgt101 wrote: post #329
Terretta wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it know to offer (in incognito mode) a list of your accounts you might want to re-login to? (Not always, but often enough to raise an eyebrow.) Seems like a pretty good reason to think it still knows who you are. As to how that works, you tell us.

Are you using random Mac addresses?

The MAC address is not sent to the server, or accessible to web pages client-side, so that wouldn't matter.

Re: The world needs more search engines

#334

Post by creato »

green1 wrote: post #279

There is no way Google doesn't use fingerprinting, or something even more advanced/creepy. I never sign into Google, use private browsing by default and use VPNs (not to hide, just for various location reasons), and Youtube's recommended for you is full of stuff unrelated the current video I'm watching that I've seen before with different IPs and locations/VPNs. Edit: LMAO at the sudden attempt to bury this post with…

Funny, my personal anecdote on this topic is that when I'm not signed in to my youtube account, I think all of the videos on my homepage and recommended videos are useless trash that make me embarrassed for humanity.

Re: The world needs more search engines

#335

Post by jefftk »

saagarjha wrote: post #303
jefftk wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right: fingerprinting is the general term for using something other than client-side storage (cookies, local storage) to determine identity. Incognito mode and other private sessions intentionally don't preserve client-side storage.

There are other ways to fingerprint users, though if Google is using them they’re certainly not making it obvious by allowing users in incognito mode the ability to sign in to their associated account.

"fingerprinting" is a catch-all term, so I'm not sure what you're saying with "there are other ways to fingerprint users".

Re: The world needs more search engines

#336

Post by saagarjha »

buboard wrote: post #288
teawrecks wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as you're ok with only searching reddit...

what else is there to search, honestly? 1000 headphone affiliate sites? "honest" reviews sponsored by sennheiser? Reddit at least provides generally-ungamed reactions and high density of opinions. Adding "reddit" is the default for any search that matters for me nowadays. I was just searching "game payment gateway" , reddit had the most informative comments.

Reddit is frequently astroturfed.

Re: The world needs more search engines

#337

Post by Darth_Hobo »

I think people should be responsible for their actions. If they only use google without even trying anything else then they are themselves to blame for whatever bias/lies google have fed them. And asking me to pay yet another tax for regulations so that dumb people are protected from the consequences of their actions is... it's like they are trying to build a kindergarten for adults. And I am not a fan of socialism.

Re: The world needs more search engines

#338

Post by [deleted] »

saagarjha wrote: post #336
buboard wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what else is there to search, honestly? 1000 headphone affiliate sites? "honest" reviews sponsored by sennheiser? Reddit at least provides generally-ungamed reactions and high density of opinions. Adding "reddit" is the default for any search that matters for me nowadays. I was just searching "game payment gateway" , reddit had the most informative comments.

Reddit is frequently astroturfed.

[deleted]

Re: The world needs more search engines

#339

Post by saagarjha »

enitihas wrote: post #332
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree mostly, but there's a little more to it. Google Search is pretty well embedded into Android. You can use Baidu or Yandex or Bing / DuckDuckGo on an Android phone, but there's substantially more friction. Considering mobile is now more than 50% of search traffic and Android is 80% of devices, that's close to 40% of all searches basically going to Google for free. Combine that with the fact that Google is embed…

Why do you think Google is embedded into Chrome? I use ddg easily with chrome, and as far as I remember, chrome allows you to change your search engine to anything, even a nobody site, as oppposed to Safari, which only allows selection from a fixed list of 4 on my Mac, so I can't use Yandex as my default. Desktop is dominated by windows, where bing search is embedded in the start menu, from where it is non trivial to…

> chrome allows you to change your search engine to anything

Which they mention a line below your quote.

Re: The world needs more search engines

#340

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

green1 wrote: post #279

There is no way Google doesn't use fingerprinting, or something even more advanced/creepy. I never sign into Google, use private browsing by default and use VPNs (not to hide, just for various location reasons), and Youtube's recommended for you is full of stuff unrelated the current video I'm watching that I've seen before with different IPs and locations/VPNs. Edit: LMAO at the sudden attempt to bury this post with…

As another person who works at Google, I'm pretty sure we don't do this.

There's obviously no way I could know for certain. It's a big company. There could be some secret part of the organization that does shady stuff in the shadows.

As far as your concerns go, YouTube is still somewhat separated. I can't really speak for Google. I have almost no clue what YouTube is doing. But, this sounds more like a coincidence or actually how recommendation systems are designed to work.

Perhaps the content is popular in general, popular in the area, or what you think is unrelated -- statistically -- actually isn't. If you're watching videos with not many views... you are one of the only people to watch those videos. The recommendation system is going to recommend videos of people that watched that video before -- which you'll have a strong weight to. After just a few videos, your previous views will start to get significant weight. It's just how stats works.

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