Good idea, but does not work with Financial Times.
Wait, Google Sent Me
21–30 of 246 posts
Re: Wait, Google Sent Me
#22It would be nice if Google could make some of the Chrome permissions a bit more fine-grained. This one needs to "read and change your data on all websites", but with a better extensions architecture could be something much less scary like "read and change your data on the current website whenever you click the extension's icon".
That granularity exists -- it's called activeTab: https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/activeTab
(Though it might not be possible to modify the referer with activeTab alone :/)
Re: Wait, Google Sent Me
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you give more information on how do some websites react to a google referer?
Many news websites will pop up a paywall if you visit a link directly, but won't if you arrive from a Google search.
The reason for this being that Google results penalize sites that show content to the crawler and then hide it from people who visit the page (ie non-subscribers). If they want it in the index, it has to be actually viewable.
The alternative would be to not show paywalled content to Google's crawlers, and have them entirely left out of search results.
Re: Wait, Google Sent Me
#24Re: Wait, Google Sent Me
#25Really? With a Google™ in the name, too? What do you think is going to happen in the next two hours?
1) They'll take down your extension because you're violating their ToS and their trademark
2) The extension will already piss off their "partners", but they can't really say that's the reason they're taking it down, so good thing you provided them with option 1)!
I have nothing against the extension itself. I search for such headlines all the time in Google, too. I just think it's reckless to taunt Google like this and give them an excuse to shut it down on a silver platter.
Re: Wait, Google Sent Me
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you give more information on how do some websites react to a google referer?
The design intent is almost certainly using Google's "first click free" policy, which primarily applies to newspapers like the NYT or WSJ. Google back in the day struck a deal with the print media: they would remain in Google's index if and only if clicking from a Google search to their articles circumvented their paywall on the first click. If they put only partial content or a full paywall, they'd be delisted. It w…
So it's not so much that they intended to have a "first click free" policy in the first place but that they are forced to do an exception in order to remain in Google's index. That's interesting, I always wondered why didn't they apply the same policy to being linked in Reddit or HN.
Re: Wait, Google Sent Me
#27This is gonna mess up some major web analytics stats about referrers :)
Re: Wait, Google Sent Me
#28I think it's funny that Jeremy made this considering his background.
The person who build the paywall is the best qualified to tear it down. :)
Re: Wait, Google Sent Me
#29Source code: https://gist.github.com/jashkenas/9a4d9e648eb11aab394e
Did someone make a Firefox version yet?
You can achieve the same thing with the RefControl add-on, which allows you to set a custom referrer for a particular site:
Re: Wait, Google Sent Me
#30Really? With a Google™ in the name, too? What do you think is going to happen in the next two hours? 1) They'll take down your extension because you're violating their ToS and their trademark 2) The extension will already piss off their "partners", but they can't really say that's the reason they're taking it down, so good thing you provided them with option 1)! I have nothing against the extension itself. I search f…
If you use a trademarked name you're supposed to put the tm there. e.g. I used F1 in the name of an app and was contacted by the rights holders. Their only demand was that anywhere I use the text 'F1' I put the tm mark.