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Google Search Now Uses Service Worker For Repeated Searches (venturebeat.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Google Search is now using Service Worker to cache repeated searches, loading results twice as fast. The tidbit was shared this week by Dion Almaer, Google director of engineering, and Ben Galbraith, Google senior director of product, at Pluralsight Live in Salt Lake City, Utah. "Google Search's mission is to get relevant results to you as quickly as possible," Almaer said onstage. "So they invested in the largest deployment of Service Worker probably out there by being able to extra work on the fly and give you results sometimes twice as fast."

77 comments

  1. Can this be prevented? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Is there any way to prevent Google from using Service Worker? That would be far more valuable to me than being able to repeat a search in half the time.

    1. Re:Can this be prevented? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What's wrong with Service Worker?

    2. Re: Can this be prevented? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Apparently all you have to do is not use Chrome version only 62 on Android.

    3. Re:Can this be prevented? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My objection is to running additional threads of Google code. As far as I know, Service Worker is fine.

    4. Re:Can this be prevented? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      bing

    5. Re:Can this be prevented? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I suspect they'll give you a way to disable it, so there's that. Seems like it is pretty environment restricted anyway.

    6. Re:Can this be prevented? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's pretty easy to anticipate some ugly use cases.

      Service Worker is akin to a transparent proxy. One can imagine hosting sites injecting a Service Worker into a page and getting absolute control over every request; perfect tracking, altering every response in some manner, etc.

    7. Re: Can this be prevented? by cheater512 · · Score: 1

      Hosting sites? You mean sites that already have full control over everything on the page?

      They are relatively tame, highly restrictive and can only affect the site they belong to. If someone can inject a service worker somewhere then you have bigger problems since they'd also be able to inject regular JavaScript with far fewer restrictions.

    8. Re:Can this be prevented? by llamalad · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yes.

      https://www.ghacks.net/2016/03...

      tl; dr: about:config, disable service workers

    9. Re: Can this be prevented? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not "someone" but Google. If you enable all kinds of stuff to google by default there's nothing stopping them from sneaking service workers in under that too. Someone will find a way to abuse this pronto no doubt.

    10. Re:Can this be prevented? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well TLDR maybe but what does disabling this break in common usage, like streaming TV or webmail or whatnot? Is it in use already or can we safely get rid of it?

    11. Re: Can this be prevented? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You do realize just how stupid that sounds, right?

      Not "someone" but Google. If you enable all kinds of stuff to google by default there's nothing stopping them from sneaking html and javascript in too. Someone will find a way to abuse this pronto no doubt.

      You are describing a man in the middle attack, and not giving any reason Google would commit a felony breaking into ISPs and hosting companies to do it.

      In fact as a company I trust Google to follow the law far more than say you as an individual to do so.

      What's to stop YOU from enabling all this kind of stuff and sneaking in html, javascript, and service workers into my own web server?

      And yes before you stupidly reply with it, service worker requests do not go through google unless you visit a site run by google.
      I know you hate them so much you simply can't avoid using their search and it's everyones fault but your own, but fucking christ dude learn a little self control.
      If you don't like them, FINE, just stop going there and they can't send shit to you.

    12. Re:Can this be prevented? by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      Nothing wrong with them themselves, but they're generally underpaid and rarely get proper benefits. We need to make sure everyone in this country receives a living wage, and big corporations aren't subsidized by the families of their employees.

      Also they slow down your web browser and are difficult to disable while creating significant potential privacy issues. Especially if they use your phone to browse for porn while you're in the bathroom.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    13. Re:Can this be prevented? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      about:config doesn't work in chrome, also, the page you linked to also explicitly says "There does not seem to be a way currently to disable the feature in the Chrome browser".

    14. Re: Can this be prevented? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "In fact as a company I trust Google to follow the law" - Ahaha, oh my god you're one of those. Lol. Whatever, enjoy being fucked by Google I guess!

    15. Re:Can this be prevented? by llamalad · · Score: 1

      Google's browser doesn't let you prevent Google from running background jobs on your machine?

      I'm shocked. Shocked, I say. You should be entitled to a full refund of Chrome's purchase price.

    16. Re:Can this be prevented? by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 3, Informative

      From https://developers.google.com/...

      "A service worker is a script that your browser runs in the background, separate from a web page"

      It's not like a transparent proxy at all. I don't know why they don't just let your browser cache the page of search results instead of replicating the functionality with a script.

    17. Re: Can this be prevented? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In fact as a company I trust Google to follow the law far more than say you as an individual to do so.

      He had won the victory over himself...

    18. Re:Can this be prevented? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let's be real, no one voluntarily using Chrome has any standing to bitch about Google's bullshit.

    19. Re:Can this be prevented? by omnichad · · Score: 1

      More standing than people who don't even use it and have no reason to complain at all.

    20. Re: Can this be prevented? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are the biggest idiot I've ever seen.

    21. Re:Can this be prevented? by tepples · · Score: 1

      You should be entitled to a full refund of Chrome's purchase price.

      That'd be fine if there were a Firefoxbook.

    22. Re:Can this be prevented? by Dan+East · · Score: 1

      Because they want to track what you do and when, and show you dynamic ads for every distinct page view (the search results may stay the same, but the ads do not, as ads may get shown more times than what was paid for if they are cached). But yes, all of this complexity should be totally unnecessary. They just found a way to continue exerting the level of control and tracking they want while not harming performance quite as bad.

      --
      Better known as 318230.
    23. Re:Can this be prevented? by BrianMarshall · · Score: 1

      Is there any good reason not to do this? If I disable Service Workers, will some legitimate websites not work properly?

      --
      "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
    24. Re:Can this be prevented? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not like a transparent proxy at all.

      Actually it is. Yes, it is a script and yes it does run in the browser, but it's designed to intercept requests and fulfill them locally. This enables smart caching that appears transparent to a conventionally designed web application; the web application goes about it's usual pattern of requesting resources, but the responses are coming from your Service Worker script.

    25. Re:Can this be prevented? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not like a transparent proxy at all.

      Here is how MDN describes "service workers":

      "Service workers essentially act as proxy servers that sit between web applications, the browser, and the network (when available). They are intended, among other things, to enable the creation of effective offline experiences, intercept network requests and take appropriate action based on whether the network is available, and update assets residing on the server. They will also allow access to push notifications and background sync APIs."

      So yes, it's essentially correct to describe this as a sort of transparent proxy. The fact that it's running in the browser is the novel part.

    26. Re:Can this be prevented? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is, it's called FirefoxOS

    27. Re:Can this be prevented? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Here's Google's definition of Service Workers:

      https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/primers/service-workers/

      I don't think there are any current real-world limitations, but with background sync being a thing it provides it could be used in the future by HTML5 applications such as Spotify or whatever.

      I wouldn't worry about it too much, though. You can just disable it, then when something doesn't work you can try turning it back on and see if it fixes it. If it does, then you can make a personal judgement call on whether or not it is worth it to keep the feature active or not.

    28. Re:Can this be prevented? by BrianMarshall · · Score: 1

      Thanks!

      If I understand this, I really don't like service workers.

      If I (still) understand the way the web works, I really like the concept: I connect to a website; the website can't connect to me.

      --
      "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
    29. Re:Can this be prevented? by tepples · · Score: 1

      Mozilla discontinued Firefox OS on phones, and it never expanded to the laptop form factor in the first place.

    30. Re:Can this be prevented? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Many newish Chromebooks can run the Android build of Firefox. It actually works surprisingly well.

    31. Re:Can this be prevented? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Great conspiracy, but what you were talking about was already achieved by the Javascript they had in place.

    32. Re:Can this be prevented? by llamalad · · Score: 1

      Javascipt has pretty much ended that.

      For a while now, you connect to a web site and the site then loads its own libraries and executable code, as well as libraries and executable code from any number (I've seen 30+) of third party sites.

      You basically have no chance of understanding what's being done with your resources or to your machine (or your personal information) if you're letting sites run javascript on your machine.

      You can mitigate this somewhat with plugins like noscript, but you'll still need to manually whitelist most of the sites you visit and then painstakingly reenable third party sites and reload until the site you're trying to run actually works. And now that I use the term here, "site" isn't even applicable anymore as you're not going to a place so much as inviting a bunch of unknown coders into your own house to do who-knows-what with your information, tools, and resources.

      And no, it's not just a theoretical problem: https://blog.mozilla.org/secur...

  2. "twice as fast" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But only if you've already asked the same thing before.

  3. Re: Off topic, but true: anime is bad by reiterate · · Score: 2

    Akira though

  4. So the back button sucks even more now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This feature is going fuck with the history even more.

  5. Re: Off topic, but true: anime is bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Good point

  6. How is this an issue? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Is waiting for a web search to return the results actually thing people sit and wait for? I can't remember ever having to wait, even when having to use dial-up. It smells like a non-news item, trying to get users to go back to google.com.

    1. Re:How is this an issue? by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      In the past the world got actual web search results. Now their computer is doing things for an ad company.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    2. Re: How is this an issue? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All the time on my phone. But I suspect that has more to do with bandwidth than Googleâ(TM)s time-to-result.

    3. Re:How is this an issue? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      640 ms should be enough for anyone?

  7. Duck Duck Go by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Serves what I need. Especially since i search for stuff i don't akready know.

    1. Re:Duck Duck Go by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Serves what I need. Especially since i search for stuff i don't akready know.

      This is probably a result of too much success on Google's part.
      Google is looking to shave off a few cents a year per user.

      For background, realize that geeks may search for new stuff and try to learn and expand. The mainstream user, however, doesn't even have a home page configured beyond their browser's default, let alone understanding the concept of bookmarks or even browser bar history autocomplete.

      For users who sits down at the PC to just type "facebook" day in and day out 365 days a year, it is perfectly reasonable to cache the last result for a few weeks. I'm more interested about how exactly that service worker will pass telemetry and search statistics data to Google even for the cache search terms (a big part of their business model is in stat collection, after all) AND what it means for police investigations when liability now shifts to my local computer as Google feels like offloading some portion of incriminating statistics from their servers to my machine... How is this stuff related to Google's deals search engine polilcies involving China?

    2. Re:Duck Duck Go by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The non-free people don't need to be freed...

  8. Re: Off topic, but true: anime is bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Akira is boring AF. Impotent asian male rage put to pen, next.

  9. My question is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When will Google search stop being such a drooling retard? This wouldn't be such a big deal, but every single search engine copies Google's search results. No amount of Google dorking helps any more. All attempts to narrow down your search have been crippled. Your search terms will be ignored. It's so frustrating.

    1. Re:My question is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When will Google search stop being such a drooling retard? This wouldn't be such a big deal, but every single search engine copies Google's search results. No amount of Google dorking helps any more. All attempts to narrow down your search have been crippled. Your search terms will be ignored. It's so frustrating.

      I've noticed this too. My first few results don't even contain half of what I was searching for, and sometimes only find a single word from my search, even when I try to be more specific.

      I think Google is weighing results based on shit that most people actually were searching for, while ignoring half of what I said.

  10. Top 5 searches by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    1 assassinate vladimir putin
    2 impeach trump
    3 indict trump
    4 depose trump
    5 imprison trump

  11. Not relevant results. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Perform a search for help with any life goal.

    You are going to return snake-oil salesmen for the next 10 pages. Medical ailments and maladies, weight loss, relationship goals, even "How do I do situps properly" will return tummy-tuck cream. And every single result is a confidence game being played; worsten your despair until you do the needful, click the button, enter in your personal information, and for the next month paying companies stalk you trying to exploit your weakness with all manner of full-playing video banner ad's and clickbait. They all use the same "modern" advertising techniques which you can directly compare to vintage tin-foil-hat wearing nutcases of the 90's and what the inquirer (the magazine) has perfected.

    Unless the search is for a very, very specific question asked in a very, very specific way, Google will not give you a decent result. There's mounds of BS to wade through. Often, you could search for an older http website setup by a scientist and maintained by their family, which has the answer to your question, and they won't list it, just because.

    We're nearly to the point Google is useless for any kind of serious research. Everyone knows it but them.

    1. Re: Not relevant results. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm down with that!

  12. Re: Off topic, but true: anime is bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I approve of your abrupt dismissal of that nerds point, but the fact you know wtf ever an akira is means u also need an asskicking and swirly

  13. English much? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can't parse this into anything intelligible.

  14. Search can be “sometime twice as fast” by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I can’t say that I’ve ever thought “these search results loaded too slowly”. I have, on the other hand, said “why doesn’t Google do something about these pages which somehow manage to get highly ranked but don’t actually contain content which answers my question?”

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  15. Re:Search can be “sometime twice as fast&rdq by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, but still...nothing like getting 52 million search results in 0.04 seconds instead of 0.08 seconds.

  16. Re:Search can be “sometime twice as fast&rdq by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    I can’t say that I’ve ever thought “these search results loaded too slowly”.

    I just opened up Google and typed: "Are you slow Google?" The first line said "About 705.000.000 results (in about 0,45 seconds)". Yeah. There's a lot of things to complain about but speed of loading results is not one of them.

  17. And ten times as old by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 2

    But only if you've already asked the same thing before.

    And only if you don't care for anything that happened since the LAST time you searched.

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
  18. Are those "Service Workers" next-gen trackers? by ffkom · · Score: 1

    I haven't seen all the details yet, but the description of those "Service Workers" suspiciously sound like yet another vector for tracking the user's browsing across different web sites. I for one sure want that everything related to a web-site is gone from my computer when I close the last browser tab related to that web-site. And I do not want any "background service" implanted into my browser from visiting some site.

  19. Whatever by dohzer · · Score: 1

    Whatever 'Service Worker' is...

    1. Re:Whatever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey! I wondered the same thing. Generally, an explanation of a tech term in a /. article summary wouldn't make any sense. "Netcraft confirms it, RAID5 is dead. blah blah blah. RAID stands for..." shut up we all know what it stands for!!!

      In this case, wtf is a Service Worker? Well, I asked Google and got a result back from, um, Google.

      What is a service worker

      A service worker is a script that your browser runs in the background, separate from a web page, opening the door to features that don't need a web page or user interaction. Today, they already include features like push notifications and background sync. In the future, service workers might support other things like periodic sync or geofencing. The core feature discussed in this tutorial is the ability to intercept and handle network requests, including programmatically managing a cache of responses.

      Fun fact - I only searched for "Service Worker". If you actually search for "wtf is a Service Worker" you get very different results.

  20. Re:Search can be “sometime twice as fast&rdq by Fly+Swatter · · Score: 1

    Search results are no longer about what you want, it is about what everyone else wants. What web publishers want; what advertisers want; what politicians want; what corporations want; what governments want; what google wants; and finally, just maybe, they might include what you want.

  21. Re: Search can be “sometime twice as fast&am by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    705k results pertaining to google being slow but they aren't slow. Got it.

  22. Re: Search can be “sometime twice as fast&a by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    795 MILLION. Sorry.

  23. Re:Search can be “sometime twice as fast&rdq by rtb61 · · Score: 0

    Keh?, why don't you do something about it https://duckduckgo.com/?q=duck.... Yeah googles searches have become pretty crappy, ad loaded, biased politically, advertising dollar shifted and really privacy invasive. Don't complain about Google simply stop using them, honestly you will feel better and your searches will be far more functional. Cut google back to maps only, until something better comes along, you know it will, just a matter of time.

    --
    Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  24. Re:Search can be “sometime twice as fast&rdq by rastos1 · · Score: 1

    I canâ(TM)t say that Iâ(TM)ve ever thought âoethese search results loaded too slowlyâ

    I have, on the other hand, noticed that the DNS TTL for google.com is 300 seconds. Isn't that too low? Is it really necessary for a DNS server to check with google every 5 minutes?

  25. Re:Search can be “sometime twice as fast&rdq by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    More relevant results would be nice. Also it would be nice if Google hired some halfway decent UX/UI people.

  26. Re:Search can be “sometime twice as fast& by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

    Actually I use DDG as my default engine - have for a year or two. But occasionally when I don't get the search results I want, out of old habits I fall back to Google... and am invariably disappointed.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  27. Isn't this something we need to make noise about? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I mean, when your search isn't actually giving you a live search of information shouldn't they tell you when you get the results?

    What other live search options can we turn to?

  28. Re: Search can be “sometime twice as fast&am by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    No you clearly didn't get anything.

    At best you could claim from my post that there are 705million answer to the question. But they could be 705 million "NO!"s

  29. Google Gig by cstacy · · Score: 1

    These service workers are underpaid minions for the tech giant, slaves that come running every time those upper class pages make a request. It's the gig economy, exploiting workers who linger in the background, hoping for something to do. Shamefully discarded when there isn't enough for them to do. They're probably using foreign undocumented code, too!

  30. Cross-site flaws comprise most web vulnerabilities by raymorris · · Score: 1

    > You mean sites that already have full control over everything on the page?
    > They are relatively tame, highly restrictive and can only affect the site they belong to.

    Is what they said about JavaScript. There aren't any vulnerabilities associated with JavaScript, right?

    The same origin policy is a good idea, but browsers and web developers keep screwing it up, over and over again. Cross site request vulnerabilities and the most common type of vulnerability there is, according to HackerOne.
    ( https://www.zdnet.com/article/... )

    Cross site request forgery is another huge issue.

    Regarding "can only afford the site they belong to", the docs for service workers should be read as "we wish service workers only affected the same site, and they'll be CVEs issued for many of the thousands of different flaws which allow sites to install service workers affecting other sites".

  31. Wow, that poor guy! by kaizendojo · · Score: 1

    He must be so overworked!

  32. Re:Isn't this something we need to make noise abou by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I disagree. I'd bet that most of what people search for is in the pretty distant past (>6 months?) and has been asked before. Do you really need a live search? I mean, unless you're trying to prove that the Mandela Effect is true... (it's stlll not real, btw, I checked Google....)

  33. Fast ads by Contract+Gypsy · · Score: 0

    Yep, have you ever noticed that when you open a page that the Ads come up first? Now they'll come up even faster!

    --
    Life is in a state of dynamic equilibrium, it both blows and sucks
  34. Re:Search can be “sometime twice as fast& by rtb61 · · Score: 1

    I have noticed on the occasional google test (the geek thing to keep track), they have been getting worse and more biased, more advertiser friendly, except when they are not. I noticed they would kick the advertisers regular search results, 'below the fold', when they served up the ad, to get you to click the ad and make the advertiser pay for that search, because the end user did not see them in the results and clicked the ad instead. Really bent that. You pay google ads words for worse google searches, greedy is as greedy does. So you know google's search algorithms now incorporate a whole range of adwords algorithms, which ever serves the most profit for them at the time or in the most crazy way, serves the political ideology of the board and fuck the investors.

    What is it with tech companies and that delusion of total power, why does it always infest the minds of it's board members and get seemingly rational people to do insane things for this quarters return when it will kill the company over the long term.

    --
    Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen