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Google Adds Search History Feature
Philipp Lenssen writes "Google has released My Search History (Beta). Login with your Google account (like your Gmail account), and a search history feature will be integrated right into the Google.com homepage. You can then retrieve pages you've previously found by either clicking on calendar dates, or by performing a full-text search. Other features are available as well."
Here comes the paranoia that google is tracking EVERYONEs searches..just hiding the fact from those who don't sign up for this.
- nick
And before you privacy nuts start freaking out, this isn't the start of search logging, as proven here they've been doing it for some time.
Hello, Web portal.
They had to do it sooner or later.
Hasn't a9 been doing this for some time?
I can think of quite a few searches I've run that I'd hate to be archived and cross-referenced against my name.
On the plus side, this always opens the door to hilarious new 'Paris Hilton's hacked t-mobile' type tomfoolery.
"From the i-can't-believe-its-not-butter department, Slashdot reader AnonymousCoward writes 'rofl! I haxored google history, and guess what, Linus was searching the net for patches to his Windows 2000 machine! omfgroflolololo!!!OPijsdf0+++NO CARRIER'"
Well, that, or horse porn.
It's annoying as hell, because it tries to auto-fill your searches. It does it at the worst times, too. I was sitting down with my g/f and was Googling for something and it was happily showing a list of things that I had searched for, giving away the fact that I was looking for restaurants to visit.
I'm just glad I wasn't Googling for "itch on my nads" or anything like that. Sheesh.
When this feature is enabled, Google adds an "onmousedown" event to the search result links which makes you hit their servers first, and then they redirect you to the page you requested. You might not even notice this is happening since you can't see in the status bar that the URL you are visiting is different. (And since they are not using any status bar text changing tricks to fool you, the Firefox settings to prevent people from changing the status bar text would have no effect, obviously.)
::cough michael ::cough) ought to love this.
I think this feature is pretty damn cool, and I have no reason not to trust Google will adhere to their privacy policy and not abuse this information. I am sure the privacy nuts (i.e. those that like to have knee-jerk reactions to anything that even hints at privacy implications
You can turn the tracking off easily by pressing the "pause" button in your Google History page, or by going to your google account settings and selecting "Delete History." I verified this causes the onmousedown code to disappear completely.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Yahoo is apparently rolling out a similar type service soon...don't see much use in looking up old searches frankly. Its probably more useful for these firms to collect data for advertisers than it is for aiding in my future data retrieval.
The question is not whether they store it or not, as that can be done in many ways. It's HOW. Think about it. If they store it in their Database, then they COULD use it. But, if they use cookies or the like, then they don't have it. Think about that before getting all freaked out about getting tracked.
Foxed Design
Attila the Hun... Thomas Edison... Hoover Dam... Aha! Jenna Jameson!
Clear history.
"Eh, honey, you see, my friend started this band named 'hot asian sluts,' so I was looking for their Web page."
"Every day for three months??"
"Um, yes. Sometimes well into that night. (Cough.)"
Ok, privacy concerns aside, that's a pretty spiffy thing to have. I've wracked my brain for old searches and old sites for technical data, bits of code, and so on and came up short a lot of the time. (who hasn't surfed to Google, typed in one letter and scrolled down the list looking for something you've typed in before?)
Hell, i've written my own browser cache downloader for Safari and Mozilla (with snazzy search engine and all the trimmings) just to keep all the places i've been to current. Remembering all the places i've been to using Google helps a lot.
Keep it lean and popup free, Google, and I will use it every day.
Actually, that's what I've been doing for the past school year. My main machine's hard drive died, but all the computer labs have some brower, some IM client, and some word processor; with Gmail for email and data storage, I don't need a personal machine.
I find this funny because I've been using A9 for the longest time and it already does this. I wonder how many other features they'll borrow from A9?
If google tracks search terms, they've been hiding it very well.
paintball
To quote a recent Penny-Arcade news post:
"This next statement could sort of open up into a tangential discussion on modern game design, but suffice it to say, there are no truly original games. There can't be, at least with modern console games, and I refuse to accept "What about Katamari Damacy?!?" Bullshit, I've played enough Super Monkey Ball and Marble Madness to know better. But you need to know recent games, landmark games, the major flops, and the highly expected upcoming releases, because we all copy game design from each other, in every game, going all the way back to Pong and SpaceWar. You need to be able to say "Well, that idea seems like a whole lot of work, when I know that we could just copy the scheme from Super Virtua Soul Machine 9 to do the same thing!""
The same could be said about computers and computer applications of all sorts. Nearly everything has already been done in one way or another, but it's just being built onto and made better (or in some cases, worse. [Insert mandatory MS bashing to get +5 Funny...]) This is a great idea as long as you're not some tinfoil-hat motherfucker.
So you can search for previous searches, but does it keep a history of your searches for previous searches? Can you search for previous searches for previous searches?
This sig is umop apisdn.
If you don't want to be tracked on the Internet, there's a simple solution: don't have a static IP address and turn off cookies.
With that said, if you think this feature is a privacy issue, you should probably have your web browser history and cache disabled. I can't wait for a virus that emails the victim's history and cache to everyone in their address book. Hilarity would definitely ensue.
"Don't panic"
"They are upfront...read their privacy policy"
"They have been logging all searches for ages therefore it's ok"
Listen. Most people don't read privacy policies, so remain blissfully unaware but what they are doing when they use Google. Most people don't even think about cookies, many more don't even know or care what they are. You could argue therefore that by inference they don't value or care about their own privacy. Well, hell maybe they don't. But actually that argument alone is not good enough.
Some of us have been passionately arguing that Google is a just kind of global Carnivore type project or at least with excellent potential to be one. No one knows really what Google actually do with the data they collect; how they link it together to form individual portfolios or how they treat it, manage it, or store it. No one knows how many times they have been asked by government agencies to supply information about their users and no one knows about the integrity of Google's employees, apart from romantic fluff generated by their most avid fans.
On another note Slashdot's obsession with Google is really quite unhealthy, and concerning, and I for one have submitted several Google critical stories here only for them to be rejected, but immediately a pro Google story will appear, giving an extraordinarily one-sided view about Google. If you only read Slashdot, you would think Google are something from heaven, but if you read other sites and news sources you will know that is simply not true.
And ok that is a seperate subject, but I just wonder what this site gets out of making a news item of every single thing Google do, and yet rarely or never a critical story on Google appears. It's actually quite creepy and very noticable.
While the privacy issues were the first thing on my mind, something else occurs to me now. If Google is keeping track of search histories, aren't personalized searches the next step. If Google can tell what type of sites you like to use, couldn't they lean the search one way or the other?
This will drive the seo guys crazy.
Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
Someone should start it. Seriously, google seems to produce new things every two days or so.
No, you don't have to delete it. Just don't login. Duh.
No it's not. It is a history of my behavior on the Internet. A behavior that because it now exists as a history that is personally identifiable to me. Means that I can now be *profiled*. Maybe because I like to look at DeCSS code, or lock smithing information, or how do you make a bomb out of fertalizer, and yeah maybe I did even search for some pr0n. Not that I did any of this, but lets say I did. I did nothing but search for information that exists.
One only needs to look at the Patriot Act if you do not believe that if this information is all neat and nicely packaged up that I would not recieve way more scrutiny in my life than I want. Sorry, I guess I use google via anonymizer, but no one asked me if I wanted them to do this. (And whose to say "opting-out" just keeps me from seeing what they are saving.
Just another piece of information to be subpoenaed.
Lawyer: "Ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, according to Google's records, the defendant clearly searched for 'download Briteney MP3,' which makes him guilty not only of attempted copyright infringement (punishible by up to three years in prison), but stupidity in the first and second degree, and one count of poor spelling."
Jury: "We find the defendant, Mr. John Dumas, guilty as charged."
Defendant: "It's pronounced Doo-maas!"
Judge: "Sentenced to time served closing popups."
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Am I the only one who saw Google Adds and thought, "typo..."
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I use Google at home, I use google at work.
Will google differentiate between my work box and home box. Will I get porn ads and what not showing up on the google screen while at work (potentially embarrising at best, could place my job in jepoardy based on my employers anti-porn/ anti things that don't belong in the workplace policy). The ads might be based on what I do in the privacy of my home, but this would be like a big electronic google cum stain showing up at work.
I probally should have posted this anonymously...
A fellow worker asked me for help. I started up the browser, went to google and managed to press "m" when the browser helpfully suggested "miss sweden nude". Well, at least I wasn't his wife :)
Just to clarify (disclaimer, I'm a happy A9 employee), A9 saves the search history on the server. The A9 toolbar (for both IE and Firefox) does allow you to access your history, but it is entirely optional. You can sign in to A9 using your Amazon account and try out that (and many more features).
but this is not the google calendar we were looking for. Come on, Google -- you know everything else about me -- my shopping habits, my personal emails, what I search for at 3am, don't you want my daily scheduling info as well?
Hmmm can I import all the old searches that Google has stored against my cookie?
If not, why not?
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http://xs4.xs.to/pics/04481/p556222.gif
4. What happens when I pause the service, remove items, or delete the My Search History service?
You can choose to stop storing your searches in My Search History either temporarily or permanently, or remove items, as described in My Search History Help. However, as is common practice in the industry, Google maintains a separate logs system for auditing purposes and to help us improve the quality of our services for users. For example, we use this information to audit our ads systems, understand which features are most popular to users, improve the quality of our search results, and help us combat vulnerabilities such as denial of service attacks.
Enphasis mine.
They don't give any information on what they do with that "separate log" when you delete your search history. Their unclear wording gives the impression that even if you delete it they still keep it in their "separate log". So how is that different than not deleting it at all, other that you will not see it anymore?
That is pretty confusing and very un-google like, IMHO.
From : Turn it off
8. Once I've signed up, how do I stop storing my searches in My Search History?
If you don't want any of your searches to be saved by My Search History, you can either log out of your Google Account or simply pause the service by clicking on the "Pause" link in the blue title bar of your search history page. You can then "un-pause" it whenever you want your searches to be saved again by clicking on the Resume" link. You can also edit or remove specific searches or results from the service by clicking the Remove items" link.
To permanently stop using My Search History, you can delete the service by clicking the "Delete My Search History" link on your My Account page, which is accessible through the "My Account" links in the upper-right corner of your Google home page and search results pages.
To learn more about what happens to the data from your search history, please read the My Search History Privacy FAQ.
GDS keeps track of your Internet history, so you can actually search (and view) the cached contents (from multiple dates) of the sites you've visited with Firefox or IE. I only use GDS for this function, as I'm organized enough to know where I've put specific files on my HD. I don't use AIM or email much either. It also only searches the first 5000 words of a textfile, so it's useless for my IRC logs as well.
Google Search history keeps track of which pages you've visited through Google, but Google Desktop Search keeps track of every page you visit.
As a sidenote, I discovered that GDS merely takes a system screenshot to generate its website thumbnails.
First people saying that the Google guys are trying to avoid taxes by cutting their salary to $1.00 a year, now people are paranoid that providing an option to save your searchs is part of some big consperacy to create a profile on everyone. You don't have to log in when you search. Besides, they'd be able to make a much better profile by reading your Gmail account than by saving your search history in your account. In fact any email provider could do that.
Are some people just pissed that Google can be such a big company and still be (semi) reputable?
Localised sites, like www.google.co.uk or www.google.co.jp do not seem to have implemented this feature yet. Search terms that you enter at these sites don't appear in your Search History - just those from www.google.COM
RC.
Candygram for Mongo!
Okay, so tell us honestly: when you delete old searches, they stay recorded on the server, don't they?