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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."
When google wants them to stop, they'll be hearing from lawyers........ not just finding that google changed their page layout.
They WOULD because if you change some letters in Roswell and add one, you get Scroogle! Isn't it obvious???! It should be to the aliens who run Google. Clearly the government has you in their clutches - only an upgrade to TinFoilHat 2.3 will save you.
From the FAQ:
European Privacy Seal
On July 14th 2008 Ixquick received the first European Privacy Seal from European Data Protection Supervisor Mr. Peter Hustinx. The Seal officially confirms the privacy promises we make to our users. It makes Ixquick the first and only EU-approved search engine. Both EU Commissioner Viviane Reding and Dr.Thilo Weichert, German Privacy Commissioner complemented Ixquick on its privacy achievements.
You can find the press release here.
Since I am in EU, it also means US can't just randomly get data that doesn't belong to them, ie. for people from other countries. Frankly, EU and European countries take privacy a lot more seriously, for historical reasons too.
They are being Evil. They have a perpetual obligation to keep every single feature in a time-freeze so that third parties can use them as they see fit!
Ah, wait, no they don't.
There is an assload of meta-search engines out there. Scroogle seems to be the only one that has been affected. That's because they were saving bandwidth, processor usage, and programmer's time by using the same fucking simple interface for the last 5 years. So, they've been using an old interface that existed for the SOLE PURPOSE of being compatible with shitty old IE versions .... now that google pulls it out, they bitch about it? Come on ...
Here is what I hate: Everyone is complaining about the privacy concerns with many services, but nobody stops using them! Everyone feels they have the right for every service to work they way they want it to. Guess what, you don't. You don't like google? Stop using it!. I don't like microsoft. I Don't like anything from them. So, I don't use ANYTHING FROM THEM. Not their software, nor their services, nothing. On the other hand, we have people cracking their software and complaining when they are evil. They ARE evil? stay the hell away from it.
I'm really tired of this privacy-concerns constant circle-jerking. Stop using the shit you don't like. Simple, huh?
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Is this the same company that started anonymizing search logs sooner and refused to hand over search data to the US?
Is there a reason why you NEED a more anonymous search engine? And can you trust the other party you're going through isn't logging your search inquiries?
Ultimately it comes down to who you trust more. I just don't understand why no one trusts Google when they have the cleanest track record out there.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
No other comment - this is simply factually wrong. Let me know when Scroogle can't even resolve Google servers, then they are truly blocked.
Indeed. Scroogle sounds like a good idea... but it's a service that exists parasitically to Google proper. I'm not trying to imply anything unethical by using the word "parasite", but this really is a situation where Scroogle uses Google's capabilities/services without contributing anything back to Google. This is fine to the extent that Google tolerates it. But they are under no obligation to make accommodations to keep these third-party services running smoothly. TFA says "It's not as if Google needs the money" which seems rather uncharitable given that Google has put up with Scroogle's operations for many years now without any complaints or blocking attempts (that I'm aware of). And Google does need some money (they would have to shut down if everyone used their services through Scroogle...).
Scroogle needs to either adjust their service to keep up with Google's changes, or make a business case to Google for why it is in their best interest to provide a stable interface/API for third-party redistributors like them. The implication in TFA that they are somehow entitled to this interface/API/access is really silly.
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.
I'm legally blind (but not to the extent that I require a screen-reader) and certainly I advocate for accessability features. But, just like the /ie interface wasn't intended to be a stable screen-scraping interface for Scroogle, it wasn't intended to be an accessability feature. That's the problem with using things in unsupported ways. Sure, they may work now - but you have no assurances going forward.
I'd suggest your wife, and anyone else who finds Google's support for low-vision users lacking, contact them and start lobbying for a proper solution that they will then have proper knowledge of and reason to support.
Because if they did that, they'd be forced to abide by the search Terms of Service. And they appear to be violating Section 1.4.
By using the generic web robot approach, they're allowed to scrape Google based on the same concepts that allow Google to scrape third party web pages in the first place.
From Google's robots.txt: /ie?
User-agent: *
[snip]
Disallow:
Well, OK, so they're not obeying robots.txt in the first place. But ignoring that one pesky fact, uh...
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
It’s not a fully-automated tool, therefore not a robot. It scrapes the page only once at a real user’s direct request.
As such it is no different from a browser (which also scrapes – downloads, parses, and translates into useful format – a page once at a user’s direct request)...
or, for that matter, any different from the IE search interface that the /ie path was meant to support!
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.