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Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

sparktoro.com

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Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#271

Post by phs »

mtlynch wrote: post #47
usui wrote: post #4

> Prior to the email and call, I had neither met nor heard of the person who emailed me about this leak. They asked that their identity remain veiled And yet the journalist included a screenshot with one of the weakest blurs I've ever seen... Why would you not excise the person's video portion completely? What good does it serve to have it included in the story? Even if that portion is faked, why would you offer pote…

The author is Rand Fishkin, who's not a journalist. He's the founder of SparkToro and Moz, both companies that provide tooling and analytics for SEO. I haven't looked deeply into Fishkin's companies, but I wouldn't expect either to be on the user's side when it comes to privacy. Both companies seem to monetize clickstream data and personal information from users who probably didn't give informed consent. If the sourc…

> Both companies seem to monetize clickstream data and personal information from users who probably didn't give informed consent.

I don't think you know what you're talking about. During Rand's tenure Moz was a subscription business selling access to marketing analytics tools. Those tools focused on the structure of the clients' sites themselves rather than any analytics they might have consumed.

Source: I worked at Moz for several of those years, and helped maintain those tools.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#272

Post by tyingq »

phone8675309 wrote: post #197
p3rls wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the SEO suspicions were confirmed too. I found it VERY amusing if you go to r/SEO just yesterday there were moderators and flaired users (you know, the elites of the SEO community, lol) insisting much of this was "debunked" years ago. They of course deleted their posts, but the threads are still up. What a den of scammers over there. https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/1d1eqjj/comment/l5tvfw... https://www.…

SEO is vandalism and I one day hope the majority of Internet users see that

Perhaps, though a world without SEO doesn't necessarily surface the best content either. Not everything about Google's algorithm that's subpar is because of spam or SEO.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#273

Post by pseudalopex »

danpalmer wrote: post #37
BrenBarn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that preventing "sharing" isn't sufficient. People who are concerned about privacy don't want any such data collected or stored in the first place, ever. The implicit "sharing" of my data with Google (or whatever company) is a problem in itself. Regardless of how "seriously" Google (or whatever company) takes it, for a lot of the data I don't want them to ever have it in the first place.

This is a fair position to take, but assuming good faith all round, one that I think will typically be a minority. If you ask a user if they're willing to share crash reports only to improve the reliability of the software, I'd bet most people would be ok with this. In fact it's sufficiently reasonable that I believe GDPR allows this to be opt-out, something I broadly agree with. I do think opt-outs should be availab…

You know most of the data Google collect are not crash reports. Most and all are not the same. And you would get most of the data you wanted if you asked according to you.

In fact your opinion is not a fact.

The right spirit is informed consent.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#274

Post by harry8 »

phone8675309 wrote: post #197
p3rls wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the SEO suspicions were confirmed too. I found it VERY amusing if you go to r/SEO just yesterday there were moderators and flaired users (you know, the elites of the SEO community, lol) insisting much of this was "debunked" years ago. They of course deleted their posts, but the threads are still up. What a den of scammers over there. https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/1d1eqjj/comment/l5tvfw... https://www.…

SEO is vandalism and I one day hope the majority of Internet users see that

SEO is just another form of advertising, with all the costs, benefits and externalities of any other form.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#275

Post by pseudalopex »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #267
olliej wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developers just replaced IE as the only thing they develop for with chrome, users then _have_ to use chrome because of web developers who only develop for chrome and consider any behaviour other than "it works in chrome" as a bug in other browsers, just as they did with IE. Then there's the relentless parade of "alternative browsers" that are just chrome skins - a period IE also went through - that intentionally try…

It became trendy recently to break compatibility with Firefox. Blogs almost bragging about how they boldly made the choice. Very embarrassing stuff

Do you have examples? I would like to see how they talked about it.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#276

Post by voltaireodactyl »

GuB-42 wrote: post #259
precompute wrote: post #16

> My anonymous source claimed that way back in 2005, Google wanted the full clickstream of billions of Internet users, and with Chrome, they’ve now got it. The API documents suggest Google calculates several types of metrics that can be called using Chrome views related to both individual pages and entire domains. What answer do the engineers at google working on this have for this violation of privacy?

I am not an engineer at Google but this is I would say if I was. We don't know who you are, you are just a number in a database, and we don't even know what number, we just get the total number of visits for each website, not who visited it. It is like counting cars on a highway, not following your car. Plus, it serves the useful purpose of providing you with better search results, the terms and conditions allow it,…

The obvious response being that counting cars on the highway is a necessary first step on the road to identifying and then tracking their movements.

Similar to how insurance companies have offered voluntary, “anonymized” data dongles for discounts that are now being used (or at least revealed to be used) to collect data most often used to reject claims.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#277

Post by karma_pharmer »

eitland wrote: post #224
karma_pharmer wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why does kagi have the same artificially-massive github boost that google does and no other engine (bing, duckduckgo) does? They're just reselling google searches. With maybe 1% salted in from elsewhere for deniability.

Because that is what most of us prefer? Or at least I thought so? But with Kagi you can always lower github results if you want to. Or boost other sites that you prefer.

> Because that is what most of us prefer?

If that is true why hasn't Bing noticed it?

The github bias in google results is huge compared to bing. Just try running the same search on both sites. I find it hard to believe that the Bing engineers simply haven't noticed this.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#278

Post by freediver »

dustincoates wrote: post #176
eitland wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats exactly what I am talking about. Kagi is kind of like Google in 2009, seriously good coverage, good ranking ... but also: - more modern - more features (summarizer, bangs like in DDG, FastGPT and probably a few I forgot) - blocklists for websites (and also options to pin, raise and lower) - with actual support: report a bug and you get an answer from a real engineer, a follow up when it is fixed and a shout out…

I like Kagi a lot (just look at my comment history), but I'm letting my subscription lapse when it comes time to renew. I've found myself going to Google a lot more often, and I'm finding more and more transparently spammy sites in the Kagin index. Some, for example, are clearly Gen AI created. If I were a rich man, I would probably keep my subscription just to support a Google competitor. Alas, I'm not, and so I'll…

Have you reported any of this to Kagi? (things that are reported usually get fixed)

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#279

Post by freediver »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #231
eitland wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, Kagi has proven that Googles "SEO ruined it" argument isn't valid. In the beginning, Kagi was mostly just API calls to Google and Bing AFAIK. Their results were still better for some reason, probably because they didn't have to consider how valuable the ads on garbage site were before throwing the site out of my results.

I agree with you to some extent. For example, there's no reason I can think of why Google couldn't allow user selected domain blacklisting or custom bangs. But I fear that if a large search engine copied some of Kagi's filters/lenses for non-commercial blogs & forums then SEO agencies would dedicate immense resources to polluting them.

Small Web is non commercial sites only, by definition. And the list of included sites is manually curated. There is nothing SEO can do to infiltrate it.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#280

Post by Ferret7446 »

voltaireodactyl wrote: post #276
GuB-42 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not an engineer at Google but this is I would say if I was. We don't know who you are, you are just a number in a database, and we don't even know what number, we just get the total number of visits for each website, not who visited it. It is like counting cars on a highway, not following your car. Plus, it serves the useful purpose of providing you with better search results, the terms and conditions allow it,…

The obvious response being that counting cars on the highway is a necessary first step on the road to identifying and then tracking their movements. Similar to how insurance companies have offered voluntary, “anonymized” data dongles for discounts that are now being used (or at least revealed to be used) to collect data most often used to reject claims.

Agriculture is a necessary first step toward a dystopian society, so clearly we should ban agriculture.

The logic does not follow. "A is required for B, B is bad, so A is bad" is not logically valid.

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