Personalized Search From Google Now Opt-Out

An anonymous reader writes "CNet reports that 'Google now intends to deliver customized search results even to those searching its site without having signed into a Google account.' This may be what finally drives me to seriously experiment with cookie-free browsing. I consider non-personalized search results to be of value. They quasi-subconsciously give me a better perspective of the full range of information and ideas on the net. That, and I'm also a bit paranoid about a coming world with push-button infrastructure for personalized mis/disinformation."

Comments

oh c'mon

[drougie]

How is this a bad thing exactly? With such changes Google makes it will only help you get better search results, maybe other people get better results too somehow and it will help Google target advertisements better which benefits not just Google but advertisers and consumers too. How does this pose enough a threat for you to turn your cookies off?

Re:oh c'mon

[MrNaz]

I'd like to see Google make their far-forward cookie and personalization tracking service be opt-in. If someone wants to have Google looking over their shoulder almost 100% of the time they're on the web (remember, it's not just google.com but every site with a Google ad) ensuring that they are effectively advertised at, then it should be something you ask for, not ask to have taken away.

If they made their tracking "services" an opt-in proposition, *that* would prove to me and probably all other Google skeptics that they truly were out to do no evil.

As it stands, I'm convinced they're as evil as the next megacorp monopoly.

Re:oh c'mon

[oDDmON oUT]

"How is this a bad thing exactly?"

Two key phrases:

Uninvited opt-out "feature"
Persistent tracking

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

Re:oh c'mon

[Nerdfest]

I agree that it should be opt in, but I'm for it. Ideally, when things get advanced enough I figure Google can save me a lot of work. Once they know enough about my searching and buying habits they'll be able to do both for me. Every once in a while a box will show up at my door: "You need this. We found it at an awesome price. You will be billed via Google Finance".

Re:oh c'mon

[Kjella]

Might as well ask them to pull out a gun and shoot their own foot. What should be changed are browser defaults to "delete new cookies on exit", and make it a special opt-in to allow the site to set permanent cookies. If I go to the cookies page after a surfing session, there are tons and tons of sites that have no legitimate reason to leave cookies other than to track me. Permanent cookies should be handled by a info bar in the same way as popup windows, "Allow this site to set permantent cookies?". That would cut down cookie abuse massively.

Re:oh c'mon

[Nerdfest]

Your new sense of humour will be arriving shortly. Based on SlashDot posts, your old one seems to be broken.

Re:oh c'mon

[thetoadwarrior]

Your ISP already knows everything you're doing and pretty much any site you visit will have your IP too and know what you did on their site. The government can already track you and may be doing so now

Re:oh c'mon

[causality]

"Every once in a while a box will show up at my door: "You need this. We found it at an awesome price. You will be billed via Google Finance"." I hope you are joking, because my creep-o-meter just went off the scale.

Another generation or two of advertising and propaganda, and people will be begging for this new feature. Once conditioned to it, they will be as disappointed by companies that don't offer it as they are today at the prospect of preparing their own meals or interpreting their own information. What amuses me (despite its minor inconvenience) is the way people on this site already try to portray privacy advocates as unreasonable, paranoid, and backwards. It's as though their message is, "you don't automatically welcome every marketing effort from corporate America with open arms? WTF is wrong with you?" Since when did siding with the marketers become the default position? Ever since some of them worked for Google? Does the name really do that much for you? If so that's some effective branding, but that's all it is.

That's particularly surprising on Slashdot, with a technical crowd who should be much more aware than the masses of how information can be gathered, used, and abused. You'd think that this crowd would more intuitively understand what you can do by cross-referencing bits of information from multiple sources, like what Google is in a position to do. You'd think that because of that, there would be more privacy advocates speaking out in discussions like this. But we have our favorites and they're precious to us, aren't they? Google can do no evil because they say so, now here, look at this shiny new feature and shut up. Right? Let's also sidestep the fact that anyone could potentially data-mine if it's alright for Google to do so. Privacy is in a sorry state right now, we need some strong protections for it, and marketing efforts like this personalized search should always be opt-in. Even if Google never does any evil to anyone, you have no reasonable expectation that everyone else will be so nice.

Re:oh c'mon

[iwaybandit]

That's easy, set the cookie file permissions to read-only. I've been running the browser this way for a few months, and it has been a bit of a hassle at times. Overall it seems to be worth the trouble, since each time I start the browser, there are only the cookies for site preferences and login status.

• start browser
• go to every site that you frequently use
• log-in, set preferences, whatever it takes to make the site set the cookie that you want to preserve
• use the cookie manager to delete unwanted cookies
• close browser
• set the cookie file read-only (0400)

Next time you browse, the cookies will accumulate like always but disappear whe you close the browser. However, if you change site preferences, those changes will be lost also.

Re:oh c'mon

[peragrin]

Simple, I want an unbiased source of information even if those biases are my own. I don't want results taiolered to me, as then I can't learn new things about subjects I would never have thought about search for relavant information.

In other words i don't want all my searches spoiled by my previous line of thinking. I am not a religious nutjob who can only believe what I already know. I don't want the fact that I am catholic to let google to stop searching islamic sites, or the fact that i am a man and never wear jewelry to prevent me from searching for a bracelet for my girlfriend.

By personalizing search you limit yourself to what you already have. how do you expect to grow with such limitations. Personalizing search is stupid. the problem is there are so many stupid people on this planet that it will be a big hit.

Re:oh c'mon

[Hatta]

With such changes Google makes it will only help you get better search results

I'm not sure you will get "better" search results. Good search results are unbiased. You'll get the same results for the same terms, no matter what. If I want different search results, I will change my search terms. That puts me in control. The thought of sitting down at someone elses terminal and getting different search results from my own, or telling someone else "google this" and not being sure what sort of results they'll get is really objectionable.

I'm mainly not concerned about the privacy implications. I just think a good tool should behave in a predictable manner. No tool should ever assume that it is smarter than me.

TrackMeNot

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd wonder how it'll affect users of this nice Firefox extension...

Re:TrackMeNot

[krou]

I prefer using Optimize Google (which is based on Customize Google, but that one is no longer maintained). Optimize Google enhances Google search results, but also allows you to make Google cookie UID anonymous, plus allows you to stop all cookies being sent to Google Analytics. You can also remove Google Ads, and Google click tracking. There are other options available for most other Google tools, too e.g. GMail, Calendar, Maps, Docs etc.

Scraped Google

[gzipped_tar]

I'd suggest Scroogle (https://ssl.scroogle.org/ -- Google sans the crap), but it seems down at the moment. Cue the conspiracy theories in 3, 2, 1 ...

Re:Scraped Google

[anagama]

Scroogle looks very interesting, but how do we know it is unevil? I've looked over the site moderately thoroughly and haven't found any terms of use or privacy policy. If it is there, it isn't in an obvious spot. And even if it is there, it is nothing but words.

Scroogle itself appears to be related to http://googlewatch.org/ but whois shows different registrants (googlewatch=Deng Youqian, scroogle=Daniel Brandt). I just don't really know how to evaluate a proxy such as scroogle, because my only means of finding out information is google or other search engines, not wikipedia though as the scroogle article is deleted. If I'm going to be paranoid about search, I would be naive to trust search results, proxies, or random comments on Slashdot. And since I am a bit paranoid about search (I played with the AOL data a few years back -- a real eyeopener), I feel quite lost at sea.

proxy search services

[drDugan]

I use a proxy as my default search service, like this:

http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbw.cgi?q=google+is+collecting+your+data

There may also be others, but this one has worked for me.

Downsides: no cached or similar pages, no searchable search history, no cute math results, none of the value-add search links or maps at the top of the results - just the plain search results.

Upside: no data collection on my searches. (if I believe that the proxy is not also collecting data), you can also set it to give 100 search results as the default.

I Google

[delire]

This in built 'subjectivity' in the search mechanism represents a kind of fragmentation of the commons the searchable Internet supposedly represents: sometimes I want to know what other people know, what they are looking at, what is popular or interesting for them.

Secondly, grouping searches around an assumption of my interests assumes that my interests are 1/ Statistically quantifiable (solving a loathesome and boring problem may result in many queries), 2/ Particular to me (I may be searching for someone else, or my computer could be shared with another), 3/ Can be built from clear-text (sometimes I might be searching within a context do take me to a binary, like a video, arbitrarily linked in a page (like the comments for instance)).

Finally, isn't there a problem with diminishing returns here? The set that represents my interests will get 'smaller' in subject matter as I continue to search within that set.

I'll certainly be switching if Google's approximation of my interests goes under the radar, digging into cookies when I'm 'signed out'.

Re:I Google

[noidentity]

This is an example of a computer trying to be smart. The way it behaves changes over time with your interactions with it, but this modified behavior is particular to your connection. If you go search on another machine elsewhere, you'll get different behavior, and you might not know why you aren't finding something you could find easily on your home machines. Smart computers frustrate users. Give me a dumb, predictable computer any way, then I can accuractly predict how it'll respond to my input, and this tailor my input for the exact response I want, every time.

Re:I Google

[MagicM]

I completely agree. The privacy aspects aside, this is Google making assumptions which are likely to be wrong. It's just like with their new fade-in homepage: they assume you're there to search, but when they're wrong, the end result is just frustrating.

You know what they say about assumptions...

New Google Maps on mobile (Symbian)

[Ilgaz]

I think Google apologizers has become worse than Apple apologizers but let me try one more time.

If you install current Google maps to your Symbian phone (possibly others soon) and "reset it", it will send your personal "favorites" (read: locations saved) to Google, without even asking you. For example "Grandma's home" goes from your personal phone memory to Google, instantly.

It must have sort of "opt out" too of course but it doesn't change the fact that Google really looks like some sort of information vampire, trying to get all data from you, especially personal ones.

One day in future, looking to their horrible image among customers and several government/private investigations going on, they will ask themselves "What did we do wrong?" but it will be too late for them. My "citation"? MS history in 1990s. Quote from the book "No Logo" (sorry, double translated) "It was a cool thing to work at Microsoft but whatever happened in no time, people started to stare at us like we work for Philip Morris."

Re:New Google Maps on mobile (Symbian)

[thetoadwarrior]

If you install current Google maps to your Symbian phone (possibly others soon) and "reset it", it will send your personal "favorites" (read: locations saved) to Google, without even asking you. For example "Grandma's home" goes from your personal phone memory to Google, instantly.

I don't care if Google knows where Grandma lives. It's the Big bad wolf that I'm worried about.

Re:New Google Maps on mobile (Symbian)

[ChipMonk]

Well, now that Google knows, what's to stop them from telling the Big Bad Wolf? After all, doing that is their core business.

Re:It took THIS to get you to drop cookies?

[drinkypoo]

All that you would need is a detailed enough portfolio on everyone: habits, mannerisms, interests, etc...

That and competence. So far, google has demonstrated competence. If it is an arm of the government (let's just postulate here) then sooner or later it will become the government; google has always demonstrated an ability to promote efficient alternatives. The question has always been, if I might paraphrase Pippin, is whether the fornicating we're getting is worth the fornicating we're getting. I would argue that in order to successfully pull off an orchestrated yet personalized misinformation campaign on a national scale, the government would have to reinvent itself into an entity that would at least function efficiently as a government, which is about all you can ask for. The powers that be will always find a way to place themselves above the rest.

Simple solution

[Timosch]

Auto-delete cookies when closing the browser. It's not that complicated, and while it costs you some extra time (logging on etc.), it might be less than you thought it would. I've been doing it for 5 years now.