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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

#161

Post by nullc »

Mozilla has refused to fix the stealth URL rewriting on mousedown/onclick behavior for years[1]... it's super toxic and harmful to user privacy.

Why do they bother not implementing pings when they allow an equivalent privacy invasion to continue? Either way the user's privacy is invaded, but at least URL copy/paste still works correctly with the ping functionality.

[1] e.g. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=229050 though I'm sure there have been many other bugs filed on it.

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

#162

Post by bjornstar »

While it doesn't modify the behavior of any sites, Intercept Redirect automatically skips most redirect services. It's a dead simple implementation that attempts to require the bare minimum permissions to do the job.

https://intercept-redirect.bjornstar.com

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

#163

Post by judge2020 »

judge2020 wrote: post #144
noisem4ker wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People here may not like to read "Google" and "good" together, but yours is a description of how things actually work. Of all the tracking Google does, this is by far the most justified, and least concerning to me. I'd rather log out and search anonymously, if my concern was being put in a bubble, rather than block this kind of feedback for search result quality. Then, again, I primarily use DuckDuckGo and I wonder i…

Yes, ddg sends out beacons to improving.duckduckgo.com when you click as well to do this. https://i.judge.sh/ragged/Derpy/chrome_5j8fWLGX6J.png They have an info page on it: https://improivng.duckduckgo.com .

Correct URL: https://improving.duckduckgo.com/

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

#164

Post by canadaduane »

I've been using neeva.com lately, and I'm warming up to it. I like the idea of the search engine's revenue coming from aligning with its searchers, rather than its advertisers.

One thing I dislike, however: making you agree to terms when sharing an invitation link with friends. You'd think they would want that to be zero mental friction?

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

#165

Post by userbinator »

zokula wrote: post #148
inetknght wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Google is objectively a better search engine then it was 10 or 15 years ago.

10 or 15 years ago, I could actually find what I wanted without it second-guessing my queries and rewriting them into irrelevance.

Now it's absolutely useless for the hard-to-find information that you most need a search engine for. That's not "objectively better" at all.

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

#166

Post by Beldin »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #56
NelsonMinar wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

The fact that google made some aspect of their website behave better in chrome than in firefox is not really an argument that firefox is doing it wrong so much as yet another example of browser wars 2.0

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

#167

Post by mda »

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.

10 years ago it was probably way worse than it is today, but people has this fantasy idea of good old google that found everything magically.

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

#168

Post by mda »

userbinator wrote: post #165
zokula wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is objectively a better search engine then it was 10 or 15 years ago.

10 or 15 years ago, I could actually find what I wanted without it second-guessing my queries and rewriting them into irrelevance. Now it's absolutely useless for the hard-to-find information that you most need a search engine for. That's not "objectively better" at all.

I wish you could give us a single example.

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

#169

Post by eterevsky »

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?

Why do you call this surveillance? You just voluntarily entered your search terms. Why shouldn't Google know which link you clicked? The main purpose of this information is to improve the service that you are using.

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

#170

Post by mikeiz404 »

mikeiz404 wrote: post #77
akkartik wrote: post #29

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 r…

> …serves no purpose for its users It might be that one of the reasons they track link clicking is to determine “bounce rate” [0] to infer how useful the result is. That is something I would want to know if I were building a search engine and wanted to verify ranking accuracy. Though I would have thought there would be better ways of tracking this than url redirection if JS is enabled. 0: #5 on https://www.spyfu.com/…

Following up (since I can no longer edit):

- It’s not clear to me if google actually uses bounce rate to rank results aside from generic mention of identifying “signals that can help determine which pages demonstrate expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness on a given topic.” [0]

- google does track sites you visit and URL redirects may be a way to achieve this.

> My Activity is a central place to view and manage activity such as searches you've done, websites you've visited, and videos you've watched. [1]

0: https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/algorithms/

1: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/7028918?visit_id=...

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