Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: Google seems to have changed ncr (no country redirect)

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–36 of 36 posts

Re: Tell HN: Google seems to have changed ncr (no country redirect)

#31

Post by J_Darnley »

dorfsmay wrote: post #24
weinzierl wrote: post #2

I use Google Search rarely but https://www.google.com/ncr is still in my muscle memory. Nowadays I just ddg.gg and in the rare case I'm not satisfied with the results I add g! in the search bar. The g! seems to give me the same results as https://www.google.com/ncr . (I like to consider this a feature and not a bug.) To give you some perspective: I live in Germany but prefer to read programming or scientific topics i…

Note that I have found that if you log into a Google account to do all your searches for a given topic, you actually get better results, e.g. searching for ACL, getting results related IT vs. knees.

Of course. Google will profile you and have a search for "make" return results about the software rather than the verb. The only downside is that you have to let Google profile you which is a pretty large demand if you ask me. I would rather use a better keyword.

Re: Tell HN: Google seems to have changed ncr (no country redirect)

#32

Post by nostrademons »

StavrosK wrote: post #30
nostrademons wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GeoIPs aren't 100% reliable - there's a small but non-negligible chance that geolocating your IP will place you in a different country than you're actually in. When faced with the choice between accidentally censoring legitimate content that you have a right to see vs. accidentally letting you see content that is banned in your country, Google would much rather let you accidentally see the banned stuff.

But what's the benefit of adding another detection layer over the existing one? If the GeoIP is wrong, it'll still redirect me to the blocked domain. If I can change the domain and access it anyway, what's the purpose of blocking? It doesn't make sense to me that they implemented GeoIP blocking by redirection, as it only has added downsides.

It's an escape hatch. If they block outright, then if they block outright and are wrong, a legitimate user cannot see content that they have a right to. If they use a redirect, then a user - legitimate or illegitimate - can bypass that block, but they have to explicitly take action to. Consequences are on them, then.

Remember that Google's mission is to "organize the world's information and make it uniformly accessible and useful". Their purpose is not to block the content at all - if it were up to only Google, they wouldn't have either a block or a redirection, you'd just be able to access the content. The country redirects are the result of a negotiation with the country, where Google says "Okay, if we did this, would it be acceptable" and the government says "No, too permissive" and then Google says "Okay, what if we did this?" and then finally the government says "Alright."

Re: Tell HN: Google seems to have changed ncr (no country redirect)

#33

Post by dorfsmay »

J_Darnley wrote: post #31
dorfsmay wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that I have found that if you log into a Google account to do all your searches for a given topic, you actually get better results, e.g. searching for ACL, getting results related IT vs. knees.

Of course. Google will profile you and have a search for "make" return results about the software rather than the verb. The only downside is that you have to let Google profile you which is a pretty large demand if you ask me. I would rather use a better keyword.

I only login in Google for searches when searching IT and comp sci type questions.

Re: Tell HN: Google seems to have changed ncr (no country redirect)

#34

Post by StavrosK »

nostrademons wrote: post #32
StavrosK wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what's the benefit of adding another detection layer over the existing one? If the GeoIP is wrong, it'll still redirect me to the blocked domain. If I can change the domain and access it anyway, what's the purpose of blocking? It doesn't make sense to me that they implemented GeoIP blocking by redirection, as it only has added downsides.

It's an escape hatch. If they block outright, then if they block outright and are wrong, a legitimate user cannot see content that they have a right to. If they use a redirect, then a user - legitimate or illegitimate - can bypass that block, but they have to explicitly take action to. Consequences are on them, then. Remember that Google's mission is to "organize the world's information and make it uniformly accessib…

That makes sense. However, how do you get past the block? Changing the TLD to com redirects me to gr every time.

Re: Tell HN: Google seems to have changed ncr (no country redirect)

#35

Post by nostrademons »

StavrosK wrote: post #34
nostrademons wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an escape hatch. If they block outright, then if they block outright and are wrong, a legitimate user cannot see content that they have a right to. If they use a redirect, then a user - legitimate or illegitimate - can bypass that block, but they have to explicitly take action to. Consequences are on them, then. Remember that Google's mission is to "organize the world's information and make it uniformly accessib…

That makes sense. However, how do you get past the block? Changing the TLD to com redirects me to gr every time.

I think that's what the ncr (No Country Redirect) parameter that the article talks about does - it tells Google to not redirect to the appropriate TLD.

Re: Tell HN: Google seems to have changed ncr (no country redirect)

#36

Post by StavrosK »

nostrademons wrote: post #35
StavrosK wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes sense. However, how do you get past the block? Changing the TLD to com redirects me to gr every time.

I think that's what the ncr (No Country Redirect) parameter that the article talks about does - it tells Google to not redirect to the appropriate TLD.

That was for google.com, but it turns out that it works for blogger as well! Interesting, thank you.
Post reply on HN