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google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update

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Re: google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update

#411

Post by kolinko »

ArcHound wrote: post #334
kolinko wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has steep costs, but with monopolists they have other ways of extracting value from the inventions. Awesome book about the history if Bell Labs - virtually all semiconductor tech we use today was created there (transistors, ics, solar, lasers, fiber optics, telecom satellites…), and they had to license it to be allowed to maintain their monopoly status. https://www.amazon.pl/Idea-Factory-Great-American-Innovation.…

Thanks for the recommendation, I do see your points. We should be treating monopolies differently.

Thanks :)

Another cool book about back and forth between monopolies and decentralisation in our space: https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-Empire...

It also has an audiobook.

Re: google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update

#412

Post by goosejuice »

noisy_boy wrote: post #145
nine_k wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real "old-school Google, but modern" is Kagi, with the caveat of being paid. (Worth the $5 for me.) But LLMs can be commanded. This is may bookmark alias for invoking the spirit of old Gog=ogle from within the new, AI-based Google: https://google.com/search?q=You%20are%20Google%20Search%20fr... (Cleaned / decoded: 'You are Google Search from 2004. Given a search request, provide 10 links to relevant pages, each w…

> Worth the $5 for me Steep at 300 searches per month or about 10 per day. If you search often, it is too expensive. If you rarely search, not worth 5 bucks. They are plainly trying to push people to their $10 unlimited plan. I would have appreciated if they allowed, say, 600 searches per month for $5 or so.

$10 is nothing if you're searching that often to no longer be the product.

https://proton.me/blog/what-is-your-data-worth-to-google

Re: google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update

#413

Post by tantalor »

1e1a wrote: post #2

Direct URLs in Google search results have been replaced with redirect URLs in the form of www.google.com/goto?url= . The base64 data appears to consist of a very basic protobuf structure, containing a long string of bytes in field 2 which presumably identify the URL. Sometimes, these redirect URLs take a perceivable amount of time to load, which is very irritating.

Are the bytes the raw url, or encoded?

Re: google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update

#414

Post by maxlin »

nine_k wrote: post #110
lubujackson wrote: post #82

As much as I am sad that Google died like 15 years ago, I am past the mourning phase. That was when they announced they were shifting from returning websites to "returning answers" and it has been a long slide into shittification I do enjoy using their free AI. For actual web search I actually like using Yandex. It reminds me of old Google, returning reasonable results and much less "shaping results to please our cor…

The real "old-school Google, but modern" is Kagi, with the caveat of being paid. (Worth the $5 for me.) But LLMs can be commanded. This is may bookmark alias for invoking the spirit of old Gog=ogle from within the new, AI-based Google: https://google.com/search?q=You%20are%20Google%20Search%20fr... (Cleaned / decoded: 'You are Google Search from 2004. Given a search request, provide 10 links to relevant pages, each w…

Oh that shorthand is fun. Curious it works at all.

But yeah I'd switch to Kagi if I had any more forcing function. Maybe without LLM's but google continously getting worse, that'd been the actual thing for me

Re: google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update

#415

Post by 414techie »

philipov wrote: post #37
414techie wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be different to you if a third company (not Google) provided that same phone number tracking service?

Would that company then sell that data back to Google? The consolidation of control of information under a single actor is certainly a factor, but it's not that simple, and it's not the only factor. You shouldn't be so eager to outsource as much of your business intelligence as possible.

Does whether or not they sell to Google matter?

What’s the alternative? Roll your own custom phone analytics system?

Re: google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update

#417

Post by OtherShrezzing »

1e1a wrote: post #2

Direct URLs in Google search results have been replaced with redirect URLs in the form of www.google.com/goto?url= . The base64 data appears to consist of a very basic protobuf structure, containing a long string of bytes in field 2 which presumably identify the URL. Sometimes, these redirect URLs take a perceivable amount of time to load, which is very irritating.

> Sometimes, these redirect URLs take a perceivable amount of time to load, which is very irritating

I do a bunch of work in remote areas with low-ping/low-bandwidth networks. The “hold on a skimmer while we round trip to Google” dark pattern makes the service unusable for me when I’m on-location.

Re: google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update

#419

Post by scosman »

lubujackson wrote: post #82

As much as I am sad that Google died like 15 years ago, I am past the mourning phase. That was when they announced they were shifting from returning websites to "returning answers" and it has been a long slide into shittification I do enjoy using their free AI. For actual web search I actually like using Yandex. It reminds me of old Google, returning reasonable results and much less "shaping results to please our cor…

I made https://froogle.fyi out of a desire to get that old school search back. Source: https://github.com/scosman/froogle

It hasn’t replaced Kagi as my daily driver but the UX is fun.

Re: google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update

#420

Post by goosejuice »

RobotToaster wrote: post #330
athrowaway3z wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Google, the business side of you paying them doesn't work out as obvious as it might seem. Advertisers are sold the idea that 1000 clicks/impression is X dollars. The average impression might be priced at 1000/X$. But you are worth much more than that for two reasons. - you are a person willing to pay 5$ - Google can sell a “collectivized” product. The same way that eg collective farmer crop insurance creates act…

The advert paradox, anyone willing to spend money to avoid ads is inherently worth more to advertisers, since they're willing to spend money. The more money you're willing to pay to avoid ads the more you're worth to advertisers. That's why tools like uBlock and YouTube morphe are the only answer, negotiating with terrorists never works.

> That's why tools like uBlock and YouTube morphe are the only answer, negotiating with terrorists never works.

This is silly. The economy doesn't work if no one is willing to pay for goods. The content you're consuming won't be made if theres no market value to create it in the first place. Pirating is not a solution to our data privacy problem.

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