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Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

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Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#51

Post by elaus »

blitzar wrote: post #39
jasonsb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's stopping you? I use both browsers and I see no reason why someone would pick Chrome over Firefox at this point in time.

(Some) sites don't work on Firefox. Sure it isn't frequent, but it is frequent enough that once a day or so I have to open chrome to do something.

Seriously curious what sites those are, especially if it's not the same page every day. It literally never occurs to me (using Firefox again since 3-4 years) but I mostly browse dev-related websites.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#52

Post by pembrook »

What I find most interesting about this is that a lot of supposed "smart" algorithms of Big Tech are in fact a patchwork of "dumb" rules rules and human-picked winners. This would explain why the quality of search results is failing to keep up with developments in LLMs.

This also explains why it's impossible for incumbents to unseat the winners in many search categories -- because they've literally been picked as the winners by humans at Google.

Looking at my Twitter/X feed, I also see an oddly similar dynamic. Certain accounts appear to have been manually boosted, showing up all the time -- whereas others posting even the same exact content will never appear.

Silicon valley will loudly tell you all about how wonderful they are at "democratizing," however, if you look under the surface it appears they're just hand picking the winners.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#53

Post by mind-blight »

JSDevOps wrote: post #12

Seriously considering switching back to Firefox after all these years.

I've been using Firefox since Chrome forced users to sign in to the browser with their Google account, and I'm quite happy.

The only time it's a problem is when a site detects Firefox and won't display unlocked your using chrome or IE. I've only seen that a couple of times in the years since I switched back

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#55

Post by verteu »

danpalmer wrote: post #27
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?

Personal (not work related opinion): This basically can’t happen with things like DMA and GDPR. DMA in particular means you can’t share data across “products” without explicit consent. So you could for example collect websites that don’t work for the purposes of improving Chrome, but not then share that with the Ads/Search orgs for personalisation or targeting, as far as I understand the legislation. Personal opinion…

> I’m consistently impressed with how seriously this stuff is taken and the amount of work that goes into making sure that things like this sharing can’t happen accidentally

I believe the law is violated when it's sufficiently profitable -- it just requires VP permission.

No public sources for this except Jedi Blue, the old anti-poaching case, etc.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#56

Post by SushiHippie »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #26
jasonsb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's stopping you? I use both browsers and I see no reason why someone would pick Chrome over Firefox at this point in time.

While the reasons someone would pick Firefox: - Privacy - Tree style tabs

- uBo works better in firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#57

Post by thaumasiotes »

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…

That analogy doesn't seem like a match. If you ask a user if they're willing to share every action they ever take "only to improve the reliability of the software", a lot of them are going to say "wait, why would you even need that?"

If I'm letting you scrape crash dumps and my browser happens to crash in the request where I send my credit card information to xhamster, that's one thing. Odds are that's never happened to anyone. It's another thing for you to guarantee that you're planning to record that information.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#58

Post by redblacktree »

elaus wrote: post #51
blitzar wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Some) sites don't work on Firefox. Sure it isn't frequent, but it is frequent enough that once a day or so I have to open chrome to do something.

Seriously curious what sites those are, especially if it's not the same page every day. It literally never occurs to me (using Firefox again since 3-4 years) but I mostly browse dev-related websites.

One example I often run into: Plaid (the bank-linking company) doesn't work. Just hangs. Though I'll admit it's possible they fixed it. I've been trained to use Chrome when I have to interact with it.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#60

Post by raxxorraxor »

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?

That would be money. If someone has another excuse, they are naive or lying to themselves.

It certainly is not "to improve the net or advertising" - that would be the lying part.

Google has done some good for the net, but the scales of their contributions slowly but steadily move to the negative side.

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