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Prevent Google from mangling search result links when click/copying on Firefox

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Re: Prevent Google from mangling search result links when click/copying on Firefox

#21

Post by radlad »

nextos wrote: post #18
varenc wrote: post #11

Google does this so they have click tracking data. But they don't need to mangle URLs in Chrome because it supports the `ping` attribute on tags [0]. The ping attribute basically adds click tracking as a native browser feature so you don't need to do URL redirects. It also makes these analytics much easier for the site and mysterious to the user. Looks like most vendors besides Firefox support it. (They were pretty o…

For Firefox, there's a relatively popular extension called ClearURLs that sanitizes most URLs to remove tracking, including Google's and Amazon's.

I did notice a bug with this... I had a magic link for authentication in Gmail that used a `+` symbol in a URL, e.g. `http://example.com/token/abcd123+3cf==` and ClearURLs ended up convering the `+` to a `%20` which caused the server to fail to find the token.

Otherwise I love ClearURLs.

Re: Prevent Google from mangling search result links when click/copying on Firefox

#22

Post by zo1 »

varenc wrote: post #11

Google does this so they have click tracking data. But they don't need to mangle URLs in Chrome because it supports the `ping` attribute on tags [0]. The ping attribute basically adds click tracking as a native browser feature so you don't need to do URL redirects. It also makes these analytics much easier for the site and mysterious to the user. Looks like most vendors besides Firefox support it. (They were pretty o…

Not to be facetious but Wow - I'm not sure how we let that "feature" slide past the "privacy" folk.

Re: Prevent Google from mangling search result links when click/copying on Firefox

#23

Post by carom »

It is really worth it to switch to DuckDuckGo. You can throw a g! at the end of your search if you don't like the results DDG gave and it will redirect you to Google. That was the feature that gave me the confidence to switch over, it's painless to get different results, even on a mobile keyboard.

Re: Prevent Google from mangling search result links when click/copying on Firefox

#25

Post by mrintegrity »

BunsanSpace wrote: post #5

There's already an add-on which does this, and more. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/clearurls/

Sadly it seems to be unmaintained, or at least under maintained. I was going to open am issue for missing Firefox mobile support but issues seem to be going un answered

Re: Prevent Google from mangling search result links when click/copying on Firefox

#26

Post by Santosh83 »

zo1 wrote: post #22
varenc wrote: post #11

Google does this so they have click tracking data. But they don't need to mangle URLs in Chrome because it supports the `ping` attribute on tags [0]. The ping attribute basically adds click tracking as a native browser feature so you don't need to do URL redirects. It also makes these analytics much easier for the site and mysterious to the user. Looks like most vendors besides Firefox support it. (They were pretty o…

Not to be facetious but Wow - I'm not sure how we let that "feature" slide past the "privacy" folk.

It didn't slide past. I recall a lot of discussions but those discussing and outraging are not the ones implementing and pushing forward with sheer momentum of technological dominance and money. It's the same for every privacy issue.

Re: Prevent Google from mangling search result links when click/copying on Firefox

#28

Post by 5e92cb50239222b »

Lammy wrote: post #7

I used to use “Google/Yandex Search Link Fix” but it died along with XUL https://github.com/palant/searchlinkfix

Works fine in practice. I've had it installed for years and didn't even know it's not being maintained anymore until I saw your comment.

Re: Prevent Google from mangling search result links when click/copying on Firefox

#29

Post by akkartik »

I find link mangling to be a great test for when a service becomes too powerful relative to its users, able to add friction to its product that serves no purpose for its users[1]. Google started doing this around 2004[2]. Facebook didn't do it until a few years ago. Slack and Discord don't do it. Yet.

[1] Example: a search result that's a pdf. How do I share this link? If I click on it it downloads to my disk. If I rightclick on it I can copy a crappy URL.

[2] http://akkartik.name/firefox.html

Re: Prevent Google from mangling search result links when click/copying on Firefox

#30

Post by NelsonMinar »

varenc wrote: post #11

Google does this so they have click tracking data. But they don't need to mangle URLs in Chrome because it supports the `ping` attribute on tags [0]. The ping attribute basically adds click tracking as a native browser feature so you don't need to do URL redirects. It also makes these analytics much easier for the site and mysterious to the user. Looks like most vendors besides Firefox support it. (They were pretty o…

Note the caniuse link says "While still in the WHATWG specification, this feature was removed from the W3C HTML5 specification in 2010." Another reason I prefer Firefox. Why implement a rejected non-standard feature whose primary purpose is to enable surveillance?
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