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."

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

[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

[betterunixthanunix]

"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.

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

[betterunixthanunix]

"Only people hiding in shacks and never speaking to other humans are vulnerable to personalized misinformation."

That really depends on how well crafted the misinformation is. If every person was given exactly the information they needed to hear in order to gossip about whatever topic the powers behind the information want them to gossip about, the misinformation would work very well against people with a lot of friends. All that you would need is a detailed enough portfolio on everyone: habits, mannerisms, interests, etc...

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: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.

Re:oh c'mon

[TheSpoom]

Because the FBI and others are positively *drooling* over access to a database of everyone's entire search history, and they'll almost certainly get it.

Re:I Google

[gbjbaanb]

sometimes I want to know what other people know, what they are looking at, what is popular or interesting for them.

so do I, but they complained and now I'm not allowed within 100 yards of them :(

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.

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:You're not that interesting.

[gbjbaanb]

They're not spying on you for some nefarious purpose, it's to give you better results. You'd probably be a much happier person if you just dealt with it.

Yes, but if they do monitor all web surfing and searches and use the results to target adverts, they'll only be serving ads for porn from now on. How is that going to help society?

Seriously for a moment, once you got ads targetted by the site the ads were displayed on, so if I visited 'lawnmowers.com', I'd want to get ads for lawnmowers and garden supplies. I wouldn't want to get ads targetted things I've been surfing for previously (televisions actually) because I've moved on from that to wanting something new - ie. I wouldn't be getting the ads for stuff I want to buy, only those I had already bought.

Balkanization of the internet?

[GreenTom]

Someone wrote a book last year saying how more and more of the polarization in the U.S. is because people are segregating themselves into neighborhoods based on politics. Do you want to leave someplace with Whole Foods and yoga studios, or with megachurches and gun shops? This Google move seems to be taking this same segregation on-line. Google "climate change"....hmmm, I see this person's been to Fox News recently...better send 'em to a denial site. Or, more generally, once you get stuck in an affinity group, Google results are going to tend to keep you there. Seems like this is just going to amplify the echo chamber effect that lets so many people veer off into idiotic extremism.

Re:oh c'mon

[Antique Geekmeister]

Most of us want information. We _tolerate_ advertising. By "tuning" the advertiser, they enhance the chances of their paying clients, _not their customers_, getting what they want. We as users of Google do not want the select few larger advertisers automatically getting the lion's shares of the hits.

Re:proxy search services

[drDugan]

Google is not the concern, nor is their control. I have no expectation Google uses search history for any purpose other than algorithm tweaking. The privacy issue comes from ones search history collected in one place. In aggregate, the collection of all Internet search history is an extremely powerful tool for learning about a person, and possibly exposing things an individual doesn't even realize they are revealing.

Most people have never been sued or accused of a crime, gone through a trial, been deposed or subpoenaed, or have any understanding of just how bad things can get when situations really go bad. There are times when one justifiably wants to guard their privacy carefully, but typically it's difficult to always know in the moment when those times are. Realizing after the fact that you need to protect information from discovery is too late.

Re:proxy search services

[Anonymous Coward]

Has it ever occurred to you that Scroogle might be gathering the valuable search data of people with "something to hide"? (Yes, I know they say they won't, but that isn't particularly enforceable.)

Re:oh c'mon

[causality]

Sorry but everything Google do is opt-in by virtue of the fact you are opting to use their website

and

This has no effect on their tracking as they were doing that anyway

You do know that you contradicted yourself there, right?

FYI, Google does not track me because nothing on my network loads any of their analytics tools or other tracking devices. That's how you deal with an entity that will track you whether or not you ever use their services. By behaving this way, Google themselves have invalidated the quid-pro-quo arguments that may have been in favor of their methods.

That is, the argument goes that Google is providing free services and all they want is some of your data, so therefore it is fair enough for them to have it in exchange for those free services. This argument falls apart the moment I receive a Google tracking cookie for visiting a non-Google site and, this is key, it happens whether or not I ever use any Google services. At such time, they become intrusive and, since I don't discriminate, this causes me to treat them like any other intrusive influence; that is, they get blocked.

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: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:oh c'mon

[HiThere]

The post didn't deserve "troll". Overrated, yes, even at 1. Possibly even at 0. But it's not a Troll, and it's not Flamebait.

P.S.: There needs to be a "meta" tag, independent of mod-points. It should be able to be applied by the post's creator, and it should be one of the filterable tags. (As in "I don't want to read any meta posts".) It should also be apply-able by moderators, as should a "not-meta" tag. And again, this should be independent of mod-points, so something could be moderated as being, perhaps, both troll and meta, but since moderators are applying this tag, it should be scored. A meta value of [0.0-1.0] seems reasonable. Given the average and the count of votes, any new vote could be scaled in appropriately:
  result = ((average * oldVoteCount) + newVote) / newVoteCount.
Here I'm presuming that each vote counts as 1 or 0.

Here

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.

Re:oh c'mon

[Reaperducer]

nothing on my network loads any of their analytics tools or other tracking devices.

If you think cookies are the only way that Google (or any other web site) can track you, then it's time to turn in your geek card.

The only way to be sure that no web site is tracking you is to not use the internet. Every time you surf, you give up a little bit of privacy; just like when you leave your home and other people can see you on the street.

Re:oh c'mon

[RocketRabbit]

Advertising is not information. It's programming.

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...