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Scroogle Has Been Blocked
An anonymous reader writes "Scroogle, the secure third-party Google search interface, has been blocked by Google. Scroogle was an SSL-based search proxy that enabled one to search for and receive Google results over an SSL connection in a pseudo-anonymous manner."
While I would love to see a good rant towards Google and while I also myself use Scroogle, the summary isn't really being truthful. Google hasn't blocked anything, they just changed the page that Scroogle scrapes and they're throwing a hissy fit about it.
From the Scroogle announcement:
We regret to announce that our Google scraper may have to be permanently retired, thanks to a change at Google.
That interface was at www.google.com/ie but on May 10, 2010 they took it down and inserted a redirect to /toolbar/ie8/sidebar.html. It used to have a search box, and the results it showed were generic during that entire time.
Now that interface is gone. It is not possible to continue Scroogle unless we have a simple interface that is stable. Google's main consumer-oriented interface that they want everyone to use is too complex, and changes too frequently, to make our scraping operation possible.
Google changing something isn't exactly "blocking" a third party service. Even more so, it's just a few lines of code to get the results from main Google search too. All the search results and links have approciate html ID's associated to them and it's been the same for years already.
I have no idea why Scroogle is bitching about this.
Oh well. I changed to use ixquick, which also has the added benefit of being located in the Germany rather than US and a lot better and useful interface.
-sopssa
Google is a Public Corporation.
In fact they do. It's not clear why Scroogle has such a hard on for screen scraping.
I read the internet for the articles.
Not sure if they keep logs to subpoena
“We don’t use cookies, we don’t save search terms, and logs are deleted within 48 hours.” – graphic on their homepage.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Because they were too lazy/lacked the skill. I shed no tears for an operation called Screw-gle that can no longer suckle from the teat of Goo-gle.
Doesn't that one require a key that only supports 1,000 searches per day?
That kind of thing would make Scroogle useless. And since Scroogle has no interest in paying Google for the results, they aren't going to purchase the kind of access they'd like to have.
That's pretty much what Tor does, only it can be used for any kind of traffic, not just searching.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
Google once had a real search API. It was SOAP-based. But they discontinued it years ago.
Google's AJAX search API is, by design, very limited. All you can really do is create a little search widget, and perhaps add some fields of your own. The term prohibits doing much beyond that. "You are allowed to use the API only to display, and to make such uses as are necessary for You to display, Google Search Results on your Property. The API does not provide You with the ability to access, and You are not allowed to access, other underlying Google Services or data. Subject to the limitations and conditions described below, " ... "You agree that You will not, and You will not permit your users or other third parties to: (a) modify or replace the text, images, or other content of the Google Search Results, including by (i) changing the order in which the Google Search Results appear, (ii) intermixing Search Results from sources other than Google, or (iii) intermixing other content such that it appears to be part of the Google Search Results; or (b) modify, replace, obscure, or otherwise hinder the functioning of links to Google or third party websites provided in the Google Search Results. " Given those restrictions, you can't write Scroogle using that API.
We have a SiteTruth search page which uses the Google AJAX API. We're prohibited from re-ordering the entries or removing any of them. Since the whole point of SiteTruth is to re-order search results by business legitimacy, and we don't do that for the Google results, the Google results are inferior to the ones from other search engines. So our primary search page uses Yahoo/Bing.
Scroogle is owned by Public Information Research, Inc. Their board of directors is in Scroogle: http://www.scroogle.org/staffsc.html
Dilbert RSS feed
>Scroogle has access to the exact same information Google would have had you used Google
Wrong. The reason people that don't just walk around cluelessly believing everything people tell them are concerned about Google is that it continuously is trying to be the Panopticon. It's not just your search history, that's a tiny part of what they do now. It's Google Analytics, it's watching what you're watching on YouTube, their (pathetic) attempt to muscle into social networking with Buzz, the emails they have full access to via Gmail, etc. It's not because they want to "improve your search experience". They want a full profile on you so they can sell you as a package to advertisers.
Even setting aside concerns about oppressive governments getting their hands on this data, do you really want advertisers to have this data in detail? For example, Amazon already uses differential pricing. If a retailer knows you are super keen on a particular genre, they may provide you with *higher* pricing than other people because they are reasonably sure you'll pay. I don't want to hand over negotiating leverage to a party that already has way more information than I do.