11 replies to this topic

[Budfred]

I use Google a lot -- or at least I did... I noticed yesterday that suddenly my Google search was localized to my area, even though I didn't ask it to do that... As I investigated, I found that Google has decided it is in my best interest to start keeping track of my IP and associating with my location... This means that whenever I do a Google search, it will look for things close to home first, whether I want that or not... Since very few of my searches have anything to do with my area, this is an EXTREMELY irritating 'feature'... Of course, Google lets you opt out of these kinds of things right?? Well no... They explain that it is to enhance my service and searches, so they won't let me decide... I can change the setting to a larger area, such as the USA, but I can't get it to search the whole world and, as soon as I shut down my browser which automatically kills my cookies, it reverts to the local area the next time I open Firefox...

So, I am looking for an alternative to Google and that is unfortunate since I am very familiar with using it... I remember when they were the good guys who made user privacy a major point of their business and they stood up to Microsoft when others couldn't... Now they are the oppressive corporation who have decided they are too big to care about what their customers think... That is sad and it is unfortunate... I hope enough people notice and stop using it that they begin to lose market share, but I doubt that will happen... Meanwhile, my life is inconvenienced and my faith in humanity has taken another hit... Maybe it is time to look at Bing -- it is from the other corporate bully, but hopefully it is not as intrusive as Google has become...

[D-FRED-BROWN]

Google is a complete joke nowadays. Remember when they admitted to collecting LOADS of private information through wifi sniffing during their Google Street-View adventures? They've become a completely outrageous, and dishonest corporation. I've lost all my respect and trust for them.

[mikey]

Google = the biggest data miner on the planet.

I never connect directly to any known Google owned appliances anymore. I use BLs and expression filters in one of my local proxies to block all transfer to their known domains and IPs. It's been many years since I saw an AdSense markup on a page except when looking at raw source. More importantly, I'm invisible to GoogleAnalytics. As a side note; We don't even allow it's use for our VPS clients.

Anyway, If you want the Google type results, try using this.

Scroogle; http://www.scroogle.org/

Scraper; http://www.scroogle....bin/scraper.htm

SSL Scraper; https://ssl.scroogle.org/ This is the one to use.

[ipl_001]

Hi Budfred, hi everyone,

I totally agreee with you regarding Google deciding for us and collecting information!
Regarding local filtering, we noticed this feature in countries outside the US...

For example when we want to find forum discussions dealing with specific malware, we always get the subjects in our countries and not worldwide, not on US forums (for France, google.com is routed to google.fr).
Yes, the results are filtered and it's very annoying!


I don't know if this will resolve your problem but we have to run http://www.google.com/ncr
"ncr" standing for "no country redirect".

A few links about this:
-> How do I stop Google default to current country location from Safari's Google search bar?
-> How do I disable NCR (No country Redirect) when searching on omnibox
-> How to change from google.xx to google.com? [Solved/Closed]

HTH

[Budfred]

I took a quick look at SSL Scraper and I will probably use that... Thanks Mikey...

I found the bit on using the Google.com option, but there are limitations on how that works and Google is still logging your IP and tracking you... If people figure out what Google is doing, I think this could really hurt their market share... I read a thread on CNet about this and the great majority were angry about it... There were a few defending Google and marketing... One even accused the author of the article of shilling for Microsoft...

[Budfred]

FYI for anyone interested... Scroogle SSL has an add-on for Firefox to load it as the default search engine in the toolbar...

[Drabdr]

Thanks for posting, Budfred. Now that you mentioned that, it does make sense, given some of my more recent search results.

I've always wondered how they "make their money" (other than result placement for a fee); given how they give up prime ad space on their main page.

Mikey, thanks for the site suggestion. Even if one chooses to continue to use Google, it is interesting to see the vastly different results rendered from two different search engines on the same query.

[mikey]

Mikey, thanks for the site suggestion. Even if one chooses to continue to use Google, it is interesting to see the vastly different results rendered from two different search engines on the same query

Quite welcome. However, I'm not sure if you realize that both results are from the same engine...Google. The scraper just scrapes the dirt off.


Budfred, cool. :ProxyPrivate:

[snemelk]

Since the Scroogle service was permanently shut down in February 2012... Any alternatives?

Guys on BleepingComputer recommend these:
- Startpage: https://www.startpage.com/
- DuckDuckGo: http://duckduckgo.com/

[Sheldon Cooper]

This was an interesting read. I knew Google mines our data but not a vast amount like this.

[Ablion]

Google makes our life so easy , when we want solution of any problem we only go to the Google and search our solution. Now a day our habit of using Google is as common that if we lost our shoe than the other person suggest us to find it from Google. lol 

[spyz1]

This is a fairly old thread but just in case I had similar problems with  Google so I now use LXquick search engine which seems much less intrusive.