Concerns Over Google Modifying SSL Behavior

Lauren Weinstein writes "Google is handling SSL search queries on https://www.google.com/ in a manner significantly different than the standard, expected SSL end-to-end behavior — specifically relating to referer query data. These changes give the potential appearance of favoring sites that buy ads from Google. Regardless of the actual intentions, I do not believe that this appearance is in the best interests of Google in the long run."

Comments

overriding browser how?

[Hazel Bergeron]

Google passes Referer info from https to http how?

The site should get this data

[dracocat]

If I am paying per click for certain search terms, then this data SHOULD be passed along. The other alternative is to just get a bill from google and trust that it is accurate?

As an advertiser I need this information. First to make sure I get the clicks google is charging for me, and more importantly to determine which words don't have a conversion rate worth paying for.

I hate Referer

[andymadigan]

I hate referer information when I come from google, mostly because of sites that either:

1) Highlight my search terms in the page. You don't need to highlight every instance of 'of' in the page, and even highlighting the keywords is distracting.

2) Put a big fat "Welcome Google User!" (often with horribly colored letters for Google) that beg you to subscribe to the RSS feed.

I wish there was a chrome extension to hide referrer data just so that I could avoid that.

BTW: If you want an example of useless highlighting, google for VirtualBox and click on the VirtualBox website. I can't believe someone thought that people who can comprehend what VirtualBox is don't know how Ctrl+F works.