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Reactive prefetch on Google Search: 100-150ms speedup

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Re: Reactive prefetch on Google Search: 100-150ms speedup

#71

Post by taf2 »

nly wrote: post #39
quonn wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that tracking already is possible, but the proposed solution was technically cleaner. So there are not new privacy problems.

There are. It means there are now N+1 instead of N things to worry about for those of us that actually do care. It signals an acceptance that this is something to be encouraged and welcomed. All behind users backs.

I think your logic is flawed - a ping would/is extremely easy to disable via a brower extension- a redirect url is not

Re: Reactive prefetch on Google Search: 100-150ms speedup

#72

Post by chii »

crazy1van wrote: post #50
nly wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately, this was implemented in Firefox years ago but disabled due to a fear-mongering campaign by some self-styled privacy advocates who were quite vocal in sharing their misunderstanding of web privacy What 'misunderstanding'? I don't want people knowing what third party links I'm clicking on. There's no misunderstanding. I understand it perfectly. I just don't want it. I disable 3rd party HTTP referers as…

I am all for privacy and am a daily user of encrypted email and encrypted chat. However, I think there are some activities that the very privacy minded need to accept that they simply cannot participate in and maintain complete privacy. Search is one of these. In order for search to work, the user has to send a query to a third party. The third party has to be able to read the query to do the search. If that's not an…

the argument here is that the search engine should not be privy to which result you selected.

Re: Reactive prefetch on Google Search: 100-150ms speedup

#73

Post by acdha »

ksk wrote: post #60
acdha wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What 'misunderstanding'? I don't want people knowing what third party links I'm clicking on. There's no misunderstanding. I understand it perfectly. I just don't want it. This is exactly what I was talking about: the misunderstanding is thinking that your outrage changes the privacy situation in any way. The options on offer are “Stop using Google” or “Let Google collect data about the search results you click on”;…

Disabling all the JS crap that modern sites layer on top of content - reduces memory and CPU usage. I paid for the memory and CPU, and I don't want several hundreds of MBs spent caching JS interpreter/optimizer data structures and analytics scripts wasting my CPU compute power - decreasing the battery life of my device. While you may be right that the privacy angle is something that few users care about, there are re…

a) doesn't involve JavaScript and actually saves battery power by reducing the amount of time where the network is active without being fully loaded

b) It's true that you paid for the device but Google pays for the service – the deal is that they pay for everything by showing you ads. If you disagree with that you're welcome to use or start a competitor but it's absurdly entitled to think that you have any grounds to demand that they change their business model.

Re: Reactive prefetch on Google Search: 100-150ms speedup

#74

Post by girvo »

SquareWheel wrote: post #63
dchichkov wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. I'd love to see these treacherous "onmousedown" handlers that substitute the link on Google site gone! Especially on the RIGHT click. Actually, I could never understand, why Google substitutes the link with the redirect on the RIGHT click. It is necessary when you LEFT click, the page looses control and it doesn't matter much for users anyway. But WHY do it on the right click? When the user RIGHT clicks the link…

What about Right Click > Open in new tab?

Works, but it's annoying for the use-case of copying the URL. If they didn't do this, you could right-click "Copy Location". Now you have to open it in a new tab, select the address and copy it there, wasting bandwidth and time.

Re: Reactive prefetch on Google Search: 100-150ms speedup

#75

Post by _lce0 »

wlamond wrote: post #9
qwerta wrote: post #5

There is simple way to speed this up. All Google Search links point to redirection service: www.google.gr/url?example.com. It is trivial to write script which makes those links direct.

I don't work at Google, but I think they do that to gather click through data for links and positions on the results page. Simply linking to the destination would prevent them from learning valuable information about the quality of their search engine and what users think is valuable.

they do click traking on any Google product.. Just try to click in a gmail attachment.. Seriously, Why on earth do the need to track those as well?

Re: Reactive prefetch on Google Search: 100-150ms speedup

#76

Post by logicallee »

ce4 wrote: post #47
logicallee wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why don't you download the internet and run grep, then you don't have to leak your search terms. Seriously - why would you want Google to know what search terms you're using? Why would anyone want to pass this information to an untrusted third party? As for me, I think once a site has seen my exact search term, knowing which of the results I'm clicking on is a small leak and quite useful so that the popular results c…

Coincidentally that's what I do (to some extent). I use the following offline resources: * Wikipedia (smartphone, PC): Aard Dict[1] * Translation apps (smartphone) * OpenStreetMap (smartphone): OsmAnd[2] [1]: http://aarddict.org [2]: http://osmand.net

wow, so, this is what in my mind I was caricaturing. Offline living is basically incompatible with the knowledge available on the Internet, and what you mention are super unreasonable steps for normal users to take.

Re: Reactive prefetch on Google Search: 100-150ms speedup

#77

Post by logicallee »

nly wrote: post #44
logicallee wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why don't you download the internet and run grep, then you don't have to leak your search terms. Seriously - why would you want Google to know what search terms you're using? Why would anyone want to pass this information to an untrusted third party? As for me, I think once a site has seen my exact search term, knowing which of the results I'm clicking on is a small leak and quite useful so that the popular results c…

So when I google 'suicide' it's OK for Google to know whether I'm clicking on the Samaritans or the Wikipedia article? And when I Google 'rape' it's OK for Google to know whether I click on a news article about a string of recent rapes or click through to rape fetish erotica website? Not everything is black or white.

To your first question: YES, it's 100% okay for them to receive this query (a distinct issue from 'Google knowing').

I think in this case it's pretty black or white, because people would ordinarily take the time to add to their search queries. If people want to see results on (whatever fetish), do you think they would just Google the word 'sex' and then go from there, under cover that they might have just been looking up the Latin word for 6 they saw in some inscription? (Whoops, also better load the first 9,700,000 results pages in javascript, which is what I estimate you have to read through to get to something that mentions this without adding the word 'latin'). Wouldn't want to give away which page of results the user stopped on.

I mean if they want 'suicide help in Detroit' would they just Google the word suicide?

Not everything is black or white, but for Google to know what the BEST result is for 'suicide help in Detroit' is pretty black and white: they already have the query, and yes, they should know which link is clicked on the most. If it was originally on the second page through their algorithm but gets 90% of the clicks when they put it on the first page, yes, they should absolutely know and use this information. In fact (because it had been on the second page in this example) it might save lives!

there really is no trade-off or drawback. it's like the server in a restaurant asking you if you enjoyed your meal, and using this as part of recommendations the next someone someone asks what's popular.

"Well, you know what I ordered, but damned if I'll let you know what part of it I liked. That's just too personal."

reads to me that way anyway.

Re: Reactive prefetch on Google Search: 100-150ms speedup

#79

Post by nitrogen »

logicallee wrote: post #76
ce4 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coincidentally that's what I do (to some extent). I use the following offline resources: * Wikipedia (smartphone, PC): Aard Dict[1] * Translation apps (smartphone) * OpenStreetMap (smartphone): OsmAnd[2] [1]: http://aarddict.org [2]: http://osmand.net

wow, so, this is what in my mind I was caricaturing. Offline living is basically incompatible with the knowledge available on the Internet, and what you mention are super unreasonable steps for normal users to take.

super unreasonable steps for normal users to take.

Only because people have "forgotten" how to build offline apps.

Re: Reactive prefetch on Google Search: 100-150ms speedup

#80

Post by nitrogen »

sliverstorm wrote: post #45
nly wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So when I google 'suicide' it's OK for Google to know whether I'm clicking on the Samaritans or the Wikipedia article? And when I Google 'rape' it's OK for Google to know whether I click on a news article about a string of recent rapes or click through to rape fetish erotica website? Not everything is black or white.

The main argument here is, they already know which you click on. They use referral links. So that's not a sensible reason to prohibit the "ping" attribute. Given two solutions with equal potential for abuse, why not pick the technically superior solution?

There are extensions that will rewrite the referral links back to the original link, or prevent the link from being swapped in the moment of onmousedown or whatever they use.
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