Data is at the heart of search, but who has access to it? • Hacker News Board

Re: Data is at the heart of search, but who has access to it?

#81

Post by snowwrestler » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 3:40 AM UTC

minthd wrote: post #23

asuffield wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Tedious disclaimer: my opinion, not my employers. Not representing anybody else. I work at Google, not on chrome) Google does not "track the full browsing experience of chrome users". Please read the privacy policy which is very clear on this subject: https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/privacy/ I particularly draw your attention to this paragraph: "If you use Chrome to access other Google services, such as using…

Maybe i'm reading this wrong, but this sounds like Google gets your browsing history: "If you sign in to Chrome browser, Chrome OS or an Android device that includes Chrome as a preinstalled application with your Google Account, this will enable the synchronization feature. Google will store certain information, such as HISTORY, bookmarked URLs as well as an image and a sample of text from the bookmarked page, passwo…

How is this feature any different from the Firefox, IE, and Safari browser sync services?

The fact that Google synchronizes data between browsers does not necessarily mean their search application has access to it as a ranking signal.

Re: Data is at the heart of search, but who has access to it?

#82

Post by countrybama24 » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 3:51 AM UTC

Seems like there is a business opportunity to build a plugin of sorts that allows users to opt in and share their search data with competing platforms. I'd be interested in donating my data to help a rival engine compete with Google.

Re: Data is at the heart of search, but who has access to it?

#83

Post by systemBuilder » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 5:50 AM UTC

pcl wrote: post #5

Interesting. I wonder to what extent this reasoning was behind executive support of the Chrome project, and whether it was a factor from the onset or something that Google stumbled upon after developing a browser.

In my opinion, Chrome was funded for two reasons,

(a) At the time Chrome was launched, IE was dominating with ~69% market share: https://d28wbuch0jlv7v.cloudfront.net/images/infografik/norm... And, Firefox/Mozzila was topping out at 25% market share! They were basically resting on their laurels! Remember that the SPDY protocol which is the prototype standard for HTTP 2.0, was invented at Google and was the main innovation within Chrome 1.0. If you do a timed google search 2008-2010 for SPDY you will see that the SPDY whitepaper page was Nov 12, 2009 : https://www.chromium.org/spdy/spdy-whitepaper So Chrome was launched to make web browsing faster.

(b) Google Search does not want to be excluded from all browsers. The solution to this problem is to fund your own browser. If IE will dominate Firefox forever and Google was depending on Firefox defaults for much of its search traffic, then Google was virtually FORCED to create its own browser or they could always be limited to 25% (or less) search traffic share.

I think that having a "Browser account" which synchronizes browser bookmarks and settings and history across all instances of Chrome for a given user, is one of the greatest improvements in browsers in the past 5 years, and all other browsers seem to be copying this idea. If google were the evil empire as you imply, it would be suing the pants off these other browsers, but it is not.

Re: Data is at the heart of search, but who has access to it?

#84

Post by asuffield » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 8:14 AM UTC

sanxiyn wrote: post #80

asuffield wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That all seems clear and reasonable to me. I double checked the size of 'No thanks' and 'Choose what to sync' in the chrome dev tools: they are 13px, which is exactly the same size as 'Sign in' and 'Need help'. Signing in without making a specific selection gives you what the third line on the screen said it would do. What, if anything, is wrong with this?

You know it is wrong, because it misleads users. UI is not about technical accuracy, it is about what users do.

How do you believe this is misleading users? It seems quite clear to me, and while this is anecdotal rather than data, based on the people I know the feature seems to be quite popular.

Re: Data is at the heart of search, but who has access to it?

#85

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 8:23 AM UTC

minthd wrote: post #49

asuffield wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notice that this is a feature you have to turn on (try it!). Obviously in order to perform cross-device synchronisation, it's necessary to send this information. I'm not free to discuss the details of how these systems work, but consider this: if both the statements "Google will store this information" and "the fact that you are using Chrome does not cause Google to receive any special or additional personally identi…

Of course "the fact that you are using Chrome does not cause Google to receive any special or additional personally identifying information about you." could be true. But Agreeing to sign to the history sync feature is something different , not covered by "using Google Chrome".So now Google is free to use your history. And let's be realistic here. Most people don't think about the implications of login into Google(ev…

[deleted]

Re: Data is at the heart of search, but who has access to it?

#86

Post by sanxiyn » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 9:15 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #76

ChuckMcM wrote: post #58

Sigh, this is incorrect. edit: incorrect is perhaps too strong, it is incomplete. While it is true that click tracking can be used as a relevance signal, the people who were really pissed off when the data stream got dumped were advertisers who wanted to buy AdWords. That was a very simple system, pay someone for clickstream data, extract trending queries, front those with AdWord buys to get your page on the top of G…

The value of looking at queries is that it allows learning what questions users ask. The front end of the search process is to infer from the query what the user really should be given. That's a machine learning problem. The head of Google search remarked recently that "as the search engine gets smarter, the queries get dumber". This is reflected in Google's search results. A Google query which can possibly be interp…

1noon (Korean web search startup) tried to recognize provenance and was somewhat successful. But that wasn't enough to win in the market. Naver acquired 1noon.

Re: Data is at the heart of search, but who has access to it?

#87

Post by anon1385 » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 3:51 PM UTC

asuffield wrote: post #59

killwhitey wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fresh install of Chrome. https://i.imgur.com/4ZyuSNN.png Notice how little "No thanks" and "Choose what to sync are". Nice anti-pattern. And if you simply sign in and don't choose anything, this is what you get https://i.imgur.com/XQSxwu5.png

That all seems clear and reasonable to me. I double checked the size of 'No thanks' and 'Choose what to sync' in the chrome dev tools: they are 13px, which is exactly the same size as 'Sign in' and 'Need help'. Signing in without making a specific selection gives you what the third line on the screen said it would do. What, if anything, is wrong with this?

Good grief. Are you seriously comparing the text in a huge, boldly coloured and centred button with an undecorated link outside of the main UI element and claiming they have equal weight on the page just because the basic text height is the same?

When people talk about employees at large tech companies being in a disconnected bubble of delusion, this is the kind of thing they must mean.

Re: Data is at the heart of search, but who has access to it?

#88

Post by asuffield » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 10:37 PM UTC

anon1385 wrote: post #87

asuffield wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That all seems clear and reasonable to me. I double checked the size of 'No thanks' and 'Choose what to sync' in the chrome dev tools: they are 13px, which is exactly the same size as 'Sign in' and 'Need help'. Signing in without making a specific selection gives you what the third line on the screen said it would do. What, if anything, is wrong with this?

Good grief. Are you seriously comparing the text in a huge, boldly coloured and centred button with an undecorated link outside of the main UI element and claiming they have equal weight on the page just because the basic text height is the same? When people talk about employees at large tech companies being in a disconnected bubble of delusion, this is the kind of thing they must mean.

The grandparent said it was smaller, and I was merely observing that it is not. If you want to talk about colours, the colours used in both locations are the same: one is white on blue, the other is blue on white. I suppose you can claim that one is closer to the centre than the other, but this feels like splitting hairs.

When I look at this page, these buttons both seem quite readable to me, and I don't feel that either of them is concealed or hard to press. I do not believe that this page is deceptive or misleading in any way. It clearly and directly tells you what it does. And let's not forget that it's not doing a bad thing, it's offering people a feature which appears to be popular. If you're particularly concerned about adding another layer of privacy defence on top of the already fairly formidable ones that you get by default, you can add your own passphrase to encrypt the information locally on each device, and you can examine the source in chromium if you want to be sure you know what it does.

If you're complaining that the people who designed the feature are trying to encourage people to use it, then frankly I think your complaint is unreasonable.