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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

#51

Post by superjan »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #42
hvdijk wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox has a browser.send_pings setting to control this, not sending any pings when it is set to false. This is explicitly a valid browser implementation of the ping attribute: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/links.html#hyperlink-... > 2. Optionally, return. (For example, the user agent might wish to ignore any or all ping URLs in accordance with the user's expressed preferences.) The problem isn't that Firef…

Seems like it's set to false by default. So it's not really a "user request" not to track so much as a "browser request" not to. Reminds me of the situation with the "Do Not Track" header where browsers sending it by default caused the signal to lose all meaning.

Well, in the relation between user and browser vendor it is quite a reasonable default. I can always change my mind if I want to give up my privacy.

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

#53

Post by dragonwriter »

inetknght wrote: post #47
judge2020 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whose primary purpose is to enable surveillance Google search is good because it tracks what links people click and knows when they come back to go to a different url on the page. if 99% of people visit the top result for a query, return, then hit the second one, chances are that the top result never answers what the search query asks.

> Google search is good because Google search might have been good over a decade ago but today it's trash.

> Google search might have been good over a decade ago but today it's trash.

IME, its still consistently far and away better than the alternatives. Part of the difference in perception of quality may be that over time it has come to use more personal signals to zero in on relevant results, and the people that complain about how bad it is overlap considerably with those who actively seek to deny those signals to Google.

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

#54

Post by matheusmoreira »

sfink wrote: post #40
matheusmoreira wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I only need to trust the addon that I install the user script with I wonder why this is even necessary. User scripting should be a standard feature of browsers. We should have direct access to a complete Javascript environment every time we launch a browser. Just like Emacs gives users a Lisp environment.

You do, it's just in the devtools menu. The missing piece is triggering javascript based on the loaded page.

Browser devtools are amazing and do have a Javascript REPL. Do people use it for scripting though? It's always been more of a debugger than a Javascript environment. People install node.js for local scripting even though it's the same Javascript engine.

It's also not available on mobile.

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

#55

Post by JohnFen »

soraminazuki wrote: post #45
carom wrote: post #23

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.

DDG user here, I’m not even sure most people would need g! anymore. I recently came across a Google search results page, and was surprised how unrecognizable it has become. Instead of giving me a page full of search results, it was presenting me with a page full of Google-curated content. At this point, Google is basically unusable for me as a search engine.

I think it's been two years since I've used the g!

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

#56

Post by Ajedi32 »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #30
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?

Seems like it's not meant to enable tracking so much as to improve its performance and UX, as the article demonstrates. (Google tracks clicks from Firefox users just fine without ping, it just does it in a more annoying way.)

Also probably worth noting that the W3C doesn't maintain an HTML standard anymore[1]; the WHATWG standard is the definitive one.

[1]: https://www.w3.org/html/

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

#57

Post by input_sh »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #36
hosteur wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t want my clicks to be tracked!

Then call your ISP! They are tracking them, too!

Okay? Does that mean my search engine should do that too? Two wrongs don't make a right.

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

#58

Post by edoceo »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #42
hvdijk wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox has a browser.send_pings setting to control this, not sending any pings when it is set to false. This is explicitly a valid browser implementation of the ping attribute: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/links.html#hyperlink-... > 2. Optionally, return. (For example, the user agent might wish to ignore any or all ping URLs in accordance with the user's expressed preferences.) The problem isn't that Firef…

Seems like it's set to false by default. So it's not really a "user request" not to track so much as a "browser request" not to. Reminds me of the situation with the "Do Not Track" header where browsers sending it by default caused the signal to lose all meaning.

No tracking by default means it's Opt-In - as it should be.

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

#59

Post by woodruffw »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #44
judge2020 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't require running javascript, so presumably the devices could be more efficient in sending them versus XHR/fetch.

The article specifically says the offending pages used JavaScript to add the ping attribute to the tags, so the attack wouldn't have worked against users with JS disabled anyway.

My understanding of the actual amplification vector is that the JS is just obfuscation on top: they could have just as easily deployed static HTML with those attributes.

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

#60

Post by mrweasel »

soraminazuki wrote: post #45
carom wrote: post #23

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.

DDG user here, I’m not even sure most people would need g! anymore. I recently came across a Google search results page, and was surprised how unrecognizable it has become. Instead of giving me a page full of search results, it was presenting me with a page full of Google-curated content. At this point, Google is basically unusable for me as a search engine.

Mostly if DDG can't find something, chances are that neither can Google. We've also reached a point where the Google result pages are now ads the first half page. Fair enough that they want/need to make money, but it seems a little excessive.
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