Google Tracking Frequent Users

BrianGa writes "According to this article, Google has started placing a counter on its home page for a small number of its most frequent users. Most Google users do not have it, but a select few now have a counter that notes the actual number of searches made. For the curious, an explanatory page linked to the counter reveals that this is a test, or limited-sample experiment of a new search counting feature."

Comments

It uses cookies to keep count

[srboneidle]

So if you delete your cookies, or use a browser such as Opera which automatically gets rid of them after each session it can't really keep track of you.

Unless they actually *do* log you IP every time you search...

Re:It uses cookies to keep count

[bahamat]

Aparently you've never run a web server.

Every type of web server I have ever seen logs the IP address and URL of every request. Most of them even log the referrer address, browser version, and operating system. If you have cookies enabled, chances are 90% of websites you visit track you through those. In particular, /. tracks the hell out of you if you're logged in.

Many of them log javascript, java, flash, PDF and other plugins. They also track how you got there, referral, bookmark or search engine, and what search terms you used that led you there.

Maybe

[Timesprout]

The counter is placed on computer hard drives by a cookie, a software file that a Web site places without the recipient's permission or notification and that transmits information back to the site. "If the number contains more than three digits,'' the counter notes, "you truly are a Google frequent searcher.''

Maybe the article author should Google for browser security/privacy settings to find out how cookies are handled.

Re:Google is NOT dead : )

[fearlezz]

Google is not dead.

It's a result of a malicious program "Trojan.Qhosts", which exploits a bug in internet explorer to get access to your pc. Then it alters your hosts file to stop your pc from accessing google.com.

Search google for that "Trojan.Qhosts". Ow, you can't. Okay, then try this link

Re:Google is dead : /

[Sibeling]

According to this address 10k+ users are seeing this problem which is probably caused by some virus.

I'm hearing this 'virus' placed entries in the windows hosts file so that Google points to something else.
For XP the host file can be found here:
\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts
for 2000 and NT:
\Winnt\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts
and for the other Windows systems:
\Windows\hosts

Check out the entries in the hosts file and make sure there's nothing strange in it

Re:So? Whats wrong with that?

[Decaffeinated Jedi]

It should be noted that Google allows users to disable URL tracking; it's only there so the toolbar can display the current site's PageRank (which, of course, would require sending the URL to Google). As they explain in the installation, if you disable the PageRank feature through the options menu, the Google toolbar no longer makes contact with the mothership.

Watching Google Watch!

[hkmwbz]

I am sorry for responding twice to your inane drivel, but I had forgotten about Google Watch Watch .

From Google Watch Watch:

When you type "NameBase" into Google, Brandt's site comes up first, but Brandt is not satisfied with that. "My problem has been to get Google to go deep enough into my site," he says. In other words, Brandt wants Google to index the 100,000 names he has in his database, so that a Google search for "Donald Rumsfeld" will bring up NameBase's page for the secretary of defense. For some reason, though, all of NameBase's deep pages -- its pages with specific names and citations -- have a low Google page rank, which causes them to show up low in the search results. Search for "Donald Rumsfeld" in Google and in the first five pages you get a lot of .mil and .gov sites, some news stories, and some activist sites. Namebase's entry on Rumsfeld doesn't come up. (It is in Google's database, but to find it somebody would have to first wade through hundreds of results.)

Brandt sees this as Google's major flaw. "I'm not saying there aren't some sites that are more important that others, but in Google the sites that do well are the spammy sites, sites which have Google psyched out, and a lot of big sites, corporate headquarters' sites -- they show up before sites that criticize those companies."

In other words, Brandt recognizes that there has to be some order to Google's results, and that some sites might deserve to come up before others. He just disagrees with the way Google does it. In Brandt's ideal world, if you searched for "United Airlines," you would see untied.com -- a site critical of United -- before you see United's page. And if you searched for Rumsfeld, you'd see NameBase's dossier on him before the Defense Department's site on the "The Honorable Donald Rumsfeld."

Google Watch exists because of someone who wants PageRank to value his opinion more than the majority. Go figure.

Google is a Privacy Time Bomb

[ahodgkinson]

With all the froth and lather about how great Google is as the utimate search machine, we seem to forgotten that we are slowly entering our life histories into the Internet and more recently directly into Google's databases. More amazingly we're doing it for free and in some cases we're even paying for the priviledge. No one seems to be giving any thought to who or what controls the resulting data. If you subscribe to Bill Joy's views about privacy (Why the Future Doesn't Need Us) then you're fine and the rest of this article won't concern you.

If however, you are like most people, and you do draw a line between public and private information about yourself, then Google's innovative strategies combined with its overwhelming market share make it a privacy time bomb just waiting to explode. If Microsoft were behind Google, much of the world would be up in arms (Remember NT's supposed NSA Backdoor?) No so with Google. Strangely, perhaps because Google actually works pretty well and isn't laced with bugs that allow viruses to damage your home computer, no one makes a fuss.

In the recent years the public has sometimes been shocked to learn about some of the side effects that our technological progress has brought. Organizations combining data from multiple databases (for 'marketing' purposes) and technologies such as license plate recognition make possible a 'technical utopia' that Big Brother could only have dreamed about.

This combined with the hightened fear of terrorism and the corresponding (over-)reaction by governments has led to a information gathering infrastructure that is unique in world history. In the post 9/11 world there has been increasing pressure from the American government on organizations and companies (from your local library to European airlines) to forward all types to information to 'the authorities'. Google is most likely just one more intelligence source, though in all probablilty a highly valuable one, in the war against terrorism.

Suspicions that Google has 'ties' with the NSA was published in Slashdot (Should You Fear Google?) last Febuary. After reading some of the comments associated with that article, one begins to wonder if Goggle is just the Internet arm of the Echelon project.

While each tenticle pulling at our privacy is relatively harmless by itself, the combined affect of the multiple attacks on our personal privacy is large and disturbing. Worse still, is that we have only ourselves blame. Our very own democratic governments encourage and protect the individuals and organizations that are attempting to implement these policies. And largely because of own our ignorance and apathy, we don't raise our voices against it.

It's like comparing the public's reaction to a government proposal to mandate the installation of ID chips in its citizens, which causes a massive outcry, vs. parents desire to install the same chips in their children, because of their fear of abductions. The end result may be the same, but in the second case we did it to ourselves.

I guess the moral is that we should just be a bit more aware of what we're doing, and a bit more willing to say 'no'. While the current western decomcratic governments probably do 'have our best interests at heart', what happens when some unsavory character sells or gives this information to our enemies, or worse our government is no longer domocratic and becomes our enemy?