Google's new (anti)Privacy Police goes into effect at midnight.

[BBatesokc]

FYI - Google's new (anti)Privacy Policy goes into effect at midnight tonight. If you don't want Google harvesting your search history, then turn off your Google Web History setting.

I just did.

http://lifehacker.com/5887310/how-to...-policy-change

[SoonerQueen]

I have a question for you Brian. I have a gmail address and cleared my history with no problem, but I also have an msn address. I use the google search engine exclusively.How do I clear the history for the msn address? Every time I log in to google it takes me to the gmail address.Please help!

[Ginkasa]

I don't get what the difference is here. Like, I can understand why someone wouldn't want their web history tracked period. What's the difference from before to tonight at midnight?

[BBatesokc]

I think there are definitely two sides to this. I personally would rather see ads that actually might interest me instead of the random stuff you often get. Also, since a big chunk of my income comes from Internet advertising, hopefully this will mean additional revenue. However, there can be a real concern about these types of policies. What bugs me the most is the fact Google does these things without having you opt in, instead you have to opt out and if the media wasn't pushing this story, I doubt Google would do much to inform the public and tell them about the new policy and how to opt out. Not to mention, several countries say it violates their privacy laws and numerous US AG's have expressed concerns about the policy.

In the end, each person has a right to be fully informed and choose for themselves if they want in or out.

[kevinpate]

...
Ultimately, Google's mission isn't to serve ads. ...

That may not have been on the front burner when they first put the prototype together, But pretty much everything Google does and has done for a spell has been developed with the intent to bring eyeballs to advertisers, and the more motivated the eyeballs, the better for the advertisers and for Google. I don't dislike them and i think they are beyond good at what they do. However, as to their old 'first, do no evil' mantra, it's not way off base to note the unwritten part of that could very well be 'because first, we want their hearts and souls and second we want a tight grip on them. So yeah, evil if it arrives at all, it's a distant third.'

[Pete]

Something changed for me recently with Google/Chrome.

When I do a search I get very limited results, much fewer than normal. I can do the same search on bing and get 10x as many.

I double-checked to make sure I didn't have any filters in place (like a date range)... Any idea what would cause this?

[Pete]

Thanks, Sid.

But this isn't merely changing the rankings of results or culling out the junk, I'm getting very few results at all.

Seems to only be happening when I force a phrase by using quotes.


As a specific example, if I enter the search: +"american fidelity" +britton

- on Google I only get five results, all garbage
- on Bing I get hundreds including several very helpful articles

[Pete]

Wonder if you now need to sign in to get the full results? I've never signed into Google.

[Ginkasa]

By adding a space between the "+" and "britton" I got 31,100 results. The third one down seems like it might be related to what you were searching for.

[Pete]

Thanks! Adding that space worked.

But something changed because I never had to do that before.

[flintysooner]

Google Kills + Search Operator

From search help:
Terms you want to exclude (-)
Attaching a minus sign immediately before a word indicates that you do not want pages that contain this word to appear in your results. The minus sign should appear immediately before the word and should be preceded with a space.

[Pete]

Wow, thanks flinty!

That completely solved the problem... Now you just use " " instead of +.

Really weird change, though.

[BBatesokc]

NPR had a great program yesterday about the new (anti)privacy policy. Very informative and clearly explained the concerns of the new policy and the direction it is going - without a bunch of scare tactics.

[kevinpate]

Me and +term, we were good friends.
Me and "tricks" ... not so much.

Golly G ... thanks fer nuttin'.

[RadicalModerate]

I plan to check out the NPR story in the near future (and thanks for the link) but in the meantime I'm wondering:
If one doesn't have a Google account (never logs into Google for any of their services) and only uses it as a homepage for web searches . . .
and if one doesn't ever "log in" to a Youtube account (because one doesn't have one and doesn't want one)

Is there really any difference, Google-wise, today than there was on Feb. 29th?

[White Peacock]

Although it would be ideal if we could employ Google's services without being advert targets, the fact is this is where there income comes from. As long as they keep providing these excellent services (Gmail, Search, Maps, Android OS) free of charge and they remain not only reliable, but exceeding reasonable expectations for a free service, I'm at peace with all the ads, even the individualized adverts.

Amazon has done the creepy advertising thing for ages. For some reason the way they operate bothers me much more than Google's ops. When I can go to a completely unrelated website and see an Amazon side banner ad with book suggestions that actually do apply to the genre of books that I most typically view/purchase, that creeps me out a bit.

[BBatesokc]

Although it would be ideal if we could employ Google's services without being advert targets, the fact is this is where there income comes from. As long as they keep providing these excellent services (Gmail, Search, Maps, Android OS) free of charge and they remain not only reliable, but exceeding reasonable expectations for a free service, I'm at peace with all the ads, even the individualized adverts.

Amazon has done the creepy advertising thing for ages. For some reason the way they operate bothers me much more than Google's ops. When I can go to a completely unrelated website and see an Amazon side banner ad with book suggestions that actually do apply to the genre of books that I most typically view/purchase, that creeps me out a bit.

The NPR story got into a lot of issues I'd never considered. Primarily how your online profile will be used in the future. A few examples they talked about were (hopefully I get these right, I was driving at the time)....

1. The fact Google had a situation where people who were talking in a suicide chat room about certain types of drugs to take to commit suicide were all of a sudden bombarded with advertisements for those very drugs and those ads had links to discount suppliers.

2. The also showed were your profile is sometimes forwarded to companies and based on your profile you're given different rates for services.

3. They pointed out that your online profile could be legally sold to insurance providers, lenders, credit card companies etc. and they could use this information to determine all kinds of things about you.

4. Target already uses your buying profile to predict that you're pregnant and send you pregnancy specific ads to your home (a shocker to one teens parents).

I've personally seen individual's Google search habits used against people in court and not just to prove they were looking for a way to commit a crime. I've seen them used to simply embarrass a person.