Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Today we're helping people get better search results by extending Personalized Search to signed-out users worldwide
That's a staggering statement meaning that every computer accessing Google is now being personalized, signed in or not, so any desktop, laptop or kiosk will start tracking everything everyone does and you won't be able to access the same search results from any two machines.
The possible impact to all is staggering.
If you want to talk about privacy BEYOND GOOGLE, let's DO IT.
Please set up a thread or forum where we can DISCUSS THOSE ISSUES freely.
I've got years of real life info and scars in the battlefield to address about that.
But it seems somehow FALSE to NOT want to talk about GOOGLE'S PRIVACY CONCERNS in a thread labeled
"SEO and Privacy forever changed"(the original title), don't you think?
pull your sites out of google
Sounds right - hypothetically.
There's too much greed and selfishness out there...
Some call this bread (simple as that), but I agree with you about how easy people turn their eyes into dollar signs.
I hear you... if you don't like it, why help it?
I'll make quick a parallel to what's happening in AdWords - same thing. A lot of commenting like here, not much of understanding what is really going on and what the end result is to be (if there is end), people feeling about stopping everything, but...
...they need bread (golden or not), and they make it primarily through Google.
The mass, being coordinated or not, is what makes Google big.
Your will has to be stronger than steel or diamond in order to do something like this - if your site(s) really make money you need to feed your family.
Tough one, for sure.
And by the way, what do I think of a man who publicly says: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." (Source: Gawker.com [gawker.com]) This is VERY VERY concerning.
If anyone's concern is privacy itself - of search data, or even the bigger issue of privacy altogether - then they need to look beyond Google alone. A switch to Bing or whoever would not even be a long-term solution. At best it's a gesture, and a gesture towards a company that is not a protector of individual privacy today. When someone puts together a distributed search engine with great transparency and also great results, I'll be right there. But oh, the resources that will take!
I think you're on to something. How must a new, liberated search engine look like?
1) Must be open-source
2) Must be distributed, so that no single entity can corrupt/manipulate the entire thing; also helps with the quick buildup of resources
3) Maybe it should be run out of the EU in order to avoid the likes of the U.S. Patriot act?
4) The main system (frontend) should not store individual queries at all, and the organization running the front-end should not even record log-files. (If that is even legally possible where the frontend is run.) - Alternative: even the front-end is served from the distributed computers serving also the search result.
"It's really very simple" - Google's PR dept will surely say. "Users wishing to opt out of our default DNS service simply need to write down the IP addresses of their favorite sites and type them in as they are surfing the web - in private!".
P.S. And guess what happens when your site violates some mysterious unwritten rule or vague policy? Ouch! DNS de-listing is going to hurt even more than being thrown out of the Google index. Welcome to the real world, Neo!
How must a new, liberated search engine look like?1) Must be open-source
2) Must be distributed, ...
Weren't there already attempts at building a distributed open search engine with volunteers doing the crawling - like a few years ago? I seem to remember running some SETI-like spidering app on my computer for a while... Did it go anywhere? I don't remember hearing anything about it.
I believe one type of skepticism about the prospects of a "liberated" alternative has to do with the fact that serving public at large is very expensive. Only a few well-capitalized companies can afford that. But if there's somebody who can create a good indexing algorithm and the only hurdle is delivering the results, one can theorize that all they'd need to do is announce they want to sell shares to anyone. Like, webmasters unhappy about... well, the only choice right now.
Promoting an alternative should be easy if 50% of webmasters put a search box "search the web with XYZ" - just like we did years ago for a certain California-based public company.
Sadly, I think you are right. Who would actually fund such a project? Do there need to be funds at all? Developers do coding for the good cause all the time. Who writes Firefox? Who Thunderbird? Who Linux?
Now, with Internet search being monoplized by a single company that -for the first time now- implements products on top of the collected data, I think the Opensource movement should gather and build an Opensource competitor. I can't do it alone. A team of talented Opensource programmers could do.
What is this doing to YOUR SITE's stats?
I doubt we'll see anything meaningful in webstats for at least two months, probably longer.
I also think it will take a while before trends show up in the stats. However, I have noticed a slight increase in return visits and a slight decrease of new visitors from Google for the Dec 4 - Dec 7 period compared to the same period before.
Whether that's anything to do with the change or just fluctuations, I have no idea.
Considering the site only gets 34% new visitors on average and those new visitors account for 76% of the sites revenue, I would rather see new visitor numbers increase.. but anyways. To early to tell
Will keep and eye on it over the coming months.
Cheers
James
[edited by: tattoos at 8:03 am (utc) on Dec. 8, 2009]
Sadly, I think you are right. Who would actually fund such a project?
@ zett
Actually, I was saying, funding would be realistically possible - if somebody serious, with a little money - like EFF - was spearheading the effort. You'd set up a non-profit and invite everybody to donate money.
Or - another, riskier approach - one sets up a for-profit company and sells shares directly to webmasters. That is, people being spidered are also shareholders - at least some of them. Feel free to call it Utopian.
..Utopian
Utopian is just as easy to set up, as any other alternative.
It just needs the single-minded focus of a few dedicated individuals.
Keep up the good ideas.
Major Change is just around the corner!
If enough people did this I think that it would cause them real problems.
If they don't respond properly we could complain to the Information Commissioner and they would take enforcement action.
If we make enough noise this will hit the mainstream media and it will start to hurt the Google brand.
Cheers
Sid
