Choose whether Search can show you personal results based on your Google Account | Hacker News Reader

Choose whether Search can show you personal results based on your Google Account

google.com

197 pointsfranze137 comments

So in essence this is for the people who are in denial, right? Toggling the button doesn't effect what or how Google collects your data, only that you can't see it. "Yes I use Google, let Google collect my info, but under no circumstance do I want to see that info." Like what?

If you don't want Google scanning your emails, don't use Gmail. Don't want Google seeing all your queries, don't send them to Google in the first place. Use Duckduckgo or some other service.

I would have guessed this is for people who want to do a "neutral" search query without it being affected by where you are located or your past searches; I am not sure why you would jump to privacy? I guess the options feel a bit like privacy options, looking at it more carefully... but I would still see wanting to turn this off just to avoid ending up in situations where your history pollutes your screen (such as in demos).

Google records where you are and stores your every search result, and you are not sure how it relates to privacy.

Clearly they mean how this setting relates to privacy.

You are correct of course. I'm just really tired of seeing Google act like we have options when it comes to privacy.

I'm talking about privacy because it's easy for people to not realise that this is not a privacy setting. I don't know if disabling the personal results toggle even puts you in to a "neutral" mode of Google since it clearly states at the bottom that:

"Some Search results may require additional settings, like Web & App Activity or Location History".

Reading more about Web & Web app activity explains it as follows:

"If Web & App Activity is turned on, your searches and activity from other Google services are saved in your Google Account, so you may get more personalized experiences, like faster searches and more helpful app and content recommendations."[1]

[1]: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/54068?hl=en

Edit: reworded from personalized results to personal results

I have everything that Google allows me to turn off, turned off. And I rarely search (via Google) when logged in with my Google account, and I still see filtered/tailored results based on my IP location and my interests. I also run uBlock Origin, and Cookie AutoDelete, so Google are going to great lengths here to keep on tracking me.

It's now at a stage where if you don't want to be tracked, you should just stop using the Internet.

I block all Google and Facebook domains at a router level, and haven’t really had many issues. I’m sure there’s sites that don’t work with those blocked but for whatever reason they’re not sites I visit. I get cloud flare captchas occasionally but barely enough to be annoying.

I also use a VPN 95% of the time, only turning it off for Netflix occasionally.

It is the most practical solution to make sure there are no leaks to G.

The most annoying thing is that reCAPTCHA stop working: more website administrator should consider migrating to hCaptcha.

No, it's enough to turn off Javascript. Virtually all tracking code is in Javascript.

Absolutely not.

GP was concerned about:

> filtered/tailored results based on my IP location and my interests

IP location is typically computed server side, based on the originating IP of requests. Your interests are recorded server side, based on what requests were made.

"Tracking" in JavaScript is a big problem, and disabling JS does help prevent third party tools from knowing about you, but the discussion here is about first-party tracking: tracking being by Google, whose site you're using.

Ironically, the problem may be that you're logged out of your Google account. The privacy settings are saved to your account.

I, like you, have turned everything off. I use Startpage for search, but on Youtube, I find I still get personalized recommendations if and only if I accidentally log out. If I'm logged in, I get a depersonalized Youtube page.

(Yes this is problematic and I'm not suggesting anything, just explaining.)

I have YouTube search and watch history turned off. Yet if I watch a video that someone sent me a link to, I will still get that exact video or others related to it in my recommendations afterwards. Normally, only videos that I explicitly save (by upvoting or subscribing to a channel) should alter my recommendations, but clearly Google is still saving something.

Huh. Since it sounds like you do vote on videos and subscribe to channels, is it possible Google is actually just making (correct) predictions based on that?

I'm just surprised because it really does work for me. But, I make a point of never voting/subscribing/commenting/queuing/etc. And the difference between when I'm logged out and logged in is very stark.

The videos I'm thinking of that someone sent to me are way outside of what I would normally watch, so seeing that exact video in recommendations and other videos from the same channel immediately afterwards on the home page can't be a coincidence. But most of the time what I watch doesn't affect recommendations, only the odd time.

In addition to curating what I want to see with upvotes/subscriptions, I also use the "Not interested" and "Don't recommend channel" buttons heavily. For some reason YouTube always recommends those stupid "meditation music" videos, even though I have never watched one and I always block those channels. Honestly, YouTube's recommendation engine is shite; even when I tell them exactly what I like, it still recommends absolute tripe, and most of what I discover comes from external (personal) recommendations.

Actually, YouTube tracks your likes/dislikes data in a different way and it needs some obscure method to disable the privacy option. I don't remember the link though

What do you mean? I want Google to remember my ↑likes and subscriptions, so they can give me recommendations that actually reflect my preferences. I just don't want them to track which videos I watch or search for.

You can pause those in the settings under watch and search history. My problem is after I like a video or two, YouTube starts recommending me the same video over and over again. Or very similar videos. I'd rather have just a clean-slate experience.

I have turned off search amd watch history; see my previous comments.

If it starts recommending the same videos to me I press the Not Interestes button.

I think they cache everything which was recommended for some time, haven't tested the exact period.

I have an iPhone and don’t use the Gmail app. For a year or two I got a pathetic email from google saying “email is better with the gmail app!” Pretty sure google was sad I don’t have any of their apps on my phone

Point of the story is saying they already won in getting all your data is really what let’s them win.

If you use a VPN, which are getting more common, and stay away from using too many Google/Facebook products you’ll do pretty well.

I think it's silly that people feel this is related to privacy. No, no one is under any illusion that this reduces google's knowledge of you. But rah rah, bang the privacy drum! Privacy is the only possible reason! The dummies need to be informed that google and privacy don't get along!

Bah, I'm getting cranky tonight. I'll log off. Good luck with the privacy fight. I mean that genuinely; I don't think anyone really cares, beyond posting a few comments on message boards. Duckduckgo is a nice alternative, but how many programmers actually use it to find answers to programming questions? And even if a few do, I really don't get what the privacy crap is all about here.

Google added a feature that we can use to do neutral searches. That's awesome, and they deserve praise for it. But nooooo, the privacy is the ultimate altar.

> Duckduckgo is a nice alternative, but how many programmers actually use it to find answers to programming questions?

At least one. I’ve been using DDG exclusively for two or three years now. If I’m really stuck, I go straight to StackOverflow.

Also count me in. I switched 4 or 5 years ago and never had much issues finding answers to my programming questions.

Same here. Whenever the results (software related or not) are bad, I try Google search instead, but I can't remember the last time the results from Google were any better (ergo, there's no point in using Google search for me anymore)

Yeah this is a tired argument from the early days of ddg. Back in the day it was really bad for programming but these days it’s on par with Google at worst and usually better. I’ve used ddg almost exclusively since 2012/2013.

Yep same, maybe 4 years just using ddg. About once or twice a year I'll try a Google search if I'm really getting nowhere (sometimes helps, sometimes doesn't)

I've been using DDG primarily for about two years now.

It mostly works well enough.

Since I use Vimium, when it doesn't, redoing the search on Google is just a few keystrokes:

gi<Control-a>!g Enter

That's 'gi' for 'focus text input', Control-a for beginning of line, add the DDG "google this" shortcut, press return.

It's in my spinal cord, and I don't need it that often anyway.

Vimium (for Firefox at least) supports custom search engines so you can do:

og<space> my-search<enter>

'o' for open and 'g<space>' to select Google as search engine.

Oh, thanks! I hadn't realized that was an option.

Your comment is kind of boring in its dismissiveness, but you acknowledged you're getting cranky so I'll take that as the explanation. In any case, there are those that care (I'm one of them) and we would appreciate if you could refrain from cheap dismissals.

Yeah! I just needed some sleep. I'll try to be a little more self aware in the future.

Nonetheless, the thrust of it is something I feel at my core; "Google did a good thing" here, but "you won't acknowledge any good thing." Personally, I find that lame, especially with privacy arguments that seem very much like strawmen.

I really appreciate your response. :)

And yes, I agree good things should be acknowledged regardless of where they are coming from. I think people are generally just jaded with Google because they want something that Google will never be able to offer (that is, to be respectful of their privacy), so they lash out automatically out of frustration.

For the last few years, DDG has been good enough for coding questions and for general use. In fact, it's been better for general use than Google for a while now.

This can be better archived by using a second, clean browser profile.

There's no way it's easier to use a second browser profile every time you want to search and get useable results than just toggling this toggle once.

I could see wanting this as a toggle on a particular search more than an account-wide setting

This.

If only DDG was any good at local results.

Yeah, I guess. I wonder if there was a private way for DDG to implement that.

It works pretty well for me to just include <name of town> in my search query if I want local results.

That fails without personalization. Take the example of Dublin. My IP is in Europe, but DDG returns a bunch of results about Dublin, Ohio when I look for "Dublin McDonald's" before eventually linking McDonald's Ireland. Imagine how bad it'd be in Dublin or Pittsburgh, CA or worse, large cities that share a name like San Jose or Ontario.

Try "Dublin ie McDonald's".

That still doesn't resolve the ambiguity of Ontario, which is in both California (CA) and Canada (CA). Moreover, the search is getting a bit unwieldy.

The point wasn't to illustrate that there's no way to produce the information without personalization, it's to illustrate that search queries can become much more relevant and straightforward with it in particular, common scenarios.

>That still doesn't resolve the ambiguity of Ontario, which is in both California (CA) and Canada (CA). Moreover, the search is getting a bit unwieldy

"ON" or "CAN." And adding 2-4 letters is hardly unwieldy.

Well, maybe Bing team is reading the complaints and improve stuff a little for ddg users.

I don’t particularly care if Google tracks me, but I don’t want to be put in a filter bubble!

Does disabling this setting put you in a "neutral" mode of Google or just hide the [Your flight to AMS] boxes it grabs from your Gmail?

Considering that Google tracks you because you are the product they are selling, or rather, one sheep in the flock they are selling, removing the filter bubble from your search results seems like just a small, superficial fraction of the bubble Google has you in.

For me, I may be the product Google is selling, but they convince me to use Search anyway because it’s much better than the competition (yes I’ve tried DDG). And I can’t see any way that being tracked negatively affects my life, so it’s a trade I’m happy to make

I wrote more here about why personalized results and recommendations really bother me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27668373

But if Google has the information and doesn't do anything with it... I guess I just don't care? Why should I care? I'm open to being convinced on this.

Google doesn't do anything with your information for this particular search shown to you. It can still be used to skew your other interactions with Google, it's partners and anyone else with whom Google decides to share the data it has on you.

Google is renting my eyeballs by paying me with a great search engine. What's the actual harm in that.

Haha yeah, this is me and I am indeed ridiculous. :D

I try my hardest not to use Google products because I don't like tracking. Occasionally though I'm forced to use things like YouTube as it's the only source for certain information.

I turn off the personalised ads not because I think it stops them tracking me but because of the vague hope that if I still see the ads and they don't need to be personalised then just maybe Google would see the subservience as an unnecessary overhead.

...which is still just wishful thinking on my part.

For the record I would happily accept personalised adverts based on context if they would just packing in the forced tracking.

This are indeed separate effects of surveillance. For most people surveillance does not affect them, if they are not consciously aware of it all the time. They might know it, or remember it, from time to time. But they fade it out.

It is like the backrest of your chair. You just recognize it, if you focus on it. Most of the time, you don't. So the question is, do you sense it all the time, just not being aware of it?

But after all, just because Google will not turn the collected data against you at the moment, it does not mean, they won't in the future. Or some of their contractors. Or some third party instrumenting google. Or some regulator ...

It can be also for people who plan on occasionally sharing their PC. It could be a bit embarrassing to let your friend/family member fo a search and get tailored results

I need such an feature because google always seems to prefer the information that i already know. Sometimes i'm looking for websites i don't know yet because the information is rare...

Sucks that it needs an Google Account (which is no option for me), but i can have a similar effect by using duckduckgo.

Those are different settings:

- the settings for what data about your Google activity is retained are at https://myaccount.google.com/data-and-personalization — in particular, "Web & App Activity" at https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity (for new accounts, it defaults to all activity being deleted after 18 months).

- the setting for whether your Google activity is used for ad targeting is at https://adssettings.google.com (the checkbox under "Advanced", if you're signed in).

- For non-Google activity, the setting for turning off Google ad cookies on random ad-carrying websites is to block third-party cookies in your browser. For Chrome, it is at chrome://settings/cookies

> Use Duckduckgo or some other service

DDG is not a silver bullet. I use it, but only when combining it with a VPN or sometimes Tor for ultra private searches. DDG is a US company and the US doesn't have a good track record for spying and human rights. DDG's servers are all Amazon based too meaning the data is probably tapped and being spied upon. There's no way of knowing, so combine DDG with an anonymous proxy if you can.

Honestly DDG is not much better than google, hosted in Amazon and got caught selling data from their users, in the matter of search engines we're pm screwed, the ones that are really private like YacY, SearX and MetaGer don't provide results as good as google simply because they don't track the user.

About not using Google, well they're even crawling data from Telegram Groups, they're everywhere pretty hard to escape.

If you pay for google workspace do they still scan your emails?

they don't scan your emails for ads.

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en

On top of that: personalized search is the only thing I miss from when I used Google services. It's the only case I can point to where data collection actually benefitted the product in some small way. If I'm going to give them my data anyway, there's no way I'm turning that off.

I think most likely this is a sham "privacy" feature that Google is shipping solely for PR reasons

google doesn't "scan emails for ads", since ca 2017.

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en

duckduckgo is powered by bing search, no?

Maybe these people don't want others to see their search history when they look over their shoulders?

I know Google will occasionally bring literal personal information into your search results- for example if I search "directions home" it will show my home address in the search results. If you're frequently using Search in a location where you don't want these things to appear on your screen, I can definitely see it being useful. I know it's brought up contact information and random crap from emails up in Search before for me.

Ctrl+F shows nobody has mentioned searx yet, so let me - you can have your cake and eat it, too. searx uses modest resources (2G disk/2G RAM, cloud server friendly) and gives you all the results from all the search engines without being tracked in your end-user browser.

Here are some existing public instances to get started (visit Preferences! You can choose your own search engines!) and there are many, many more not listed on this page out there:

https://searx.space/

Give searx a try - what I like most is that it sees the same top result from 2 sources (say, Google and DDG) and places them as a single entry as first, but then offers a link that neither one of those had (say, Mojeek) as the second result. It actually helps you find more content by spreading out your searches to many engines at the same time and giving the best results grouped.

I run my own searx instance and it's amazing. One issue I am facing is with images not loading in the Images section sometimes, but other than it's perfect and I recommend it.

Just to share for readers, what are your personal RAM/CPU/disk usage measurements? The instance I use is shared with a small group so my numbers above may be skewed.

Thanks a lot for this. Will definitely give this a go as I'm using Google for my programming related searches and DDG for normal searches. Will see if this satisfies my needs or not.

FYI:

https://searx.me/ appears to be the link to the project and information on how to host your own setup.

Wow. This seems very cool. I wonder if there's a possiblity to add Stackoverflow as a search engine directly to searx.

Update: stackoverflow found under It settings

I have a whoogle and a searx instance running based on the official docker images. With my subjective tests Searx seems to be slower and buggy though. I am curious to know how can I optimize the speed as much as much possible.

Whoogle is a Google anonymizer and stripper-of-chaff, searx is a content aggregator on top of that same concept. While similar in the first context, searx provides a secondary layer of interacting with many search engines for well rounded content. Nothing wrong with whoogle, just not an exact 1-to-1 comparison. (cannot speak to your issues with speed and bugs, I suggest opening an issue on their Github and explaining your problems or a dedicated user forum maybe reddit?)

I guess this is possible only because Google allows/tolerates it? What would happen if a significant amount of people start using it?

This is a great tool, thanks for telling us about it (actually I discovered that I've bookmarked the searx page before and forgot about it:))

If the only person using the searx instance is you/me (aka self hosted) then now we are getting tracked by every search engine

Note that the page says "personal results", not "personalized results". Even though the submitter chose that title, reading the page carefully I don't see mention of customizing the main search results based on my activity. It's about some specific types of results: autocomplete predictions, results from private data and recommendations.

It seems like a statement in today's announcement...

> Personal results in Search include... Personal answers based on info in your Google Account, like “my flights” from Gmail

...makes some aggressively ambiguous wording in a previous announcement [0] apparent...

> Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalization after this change.

So I guess anyone who assumed that "Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalization" meant that your Gmail was not being scanned at all was mistaken, since today's setting implies that it was still being scanned for Search personalization?

[0] https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in...

Were there people that thought the latter? Certainly there's still an expectation that things like spam filtering work, which require scanning.

There is a search bar in Gmail that can be used to search the content of your emails. I think most technical people who have used Gmail realize that it wouldn't be possible for that feature to work without something, somewhere reading your emails to index them.

I wish I could toggle that switch per requests.

In some case I want result relative to my location, or other info, and in other circumstances I want generic results. In some case I want result sorted by most recent first, and others I don't care or want the oldest info. In some case I want results in my mother language and others I want English results as well. Etc. etc.

My feeling is that google provides far too few search adjustment knobs and is spoon feeding me with what google thinks that would be relevant for me.

The strange thing is that all major search engine are just copying google's behavior on this aspect.

My solution for this: open an incognito session. So ctrl+shift+N instead of ctrl+N (or RMB and select from menu)

The cookie banner has made this very annoying, especially on mobile devices where you have to scroll to dismiss it.

I mean, this must be a clear benefit to Google, they've removed almost all the abilities to target one's search and just about the only thing left appears to be using quotes ("") and that is only used as a weak signal for what is put in the SERPs.

There used to be a variable "pws=0" or something that gave non-geographic, non-personalised results.

Quotes stopped working ages ago in my experience. Very often I’ll search for a thing in quotes only to follow the top few results where the quoted term appears nowhere using ctrl+f. We are totally subjected to what they think we want. DDG has started doing this too especially if there aren’t that many results.

I expect some genius realized that a zero result page results in the user trying another search engine. But gaslighting their users with subtly incorrect results tricks the user into continuing to refine their query...

Google doesn't really care what you want or need.

It is clever tactic by privacy invasive industries to give us theoretically all the knobs to configure privacy but make them so confusing, so many, and scattered in so many places and with so many caveats, that within a rounding error, everyone is going to quickly get fatigued, confused and leave the settings as is, which in most cases is opt-out.

software solution - meta config tool

I want a setting for "Search for what I actually typed in the search bar" instead of trying to guess what I meant. I was advised to use advanced search syntax and operators but when I do I get a captcha challenge on every other search.

I didn't even know google searches could lead to captcha challenges, I've never ever gotten one.

If I open a new private FF window on my phone while on mobile data and google something, I usually get a captcha. It's kinda ridiculous.

Because your search isn't tied to previous activity by a human, you trigger the "bot-like search scraping detected" filter.

Does this mean I get the search results quality from from 2009 back or is search botched on a more fundamental level?

Depends on what you miss from 2009.

For the last 2 years, I have been having a much hard time searching on Google. Couple quick example:

1. The date filter no longer seems to work. For example, if I search for "reddit dating app" and set the date filter to be "Past week" or "Past month", it still shows me results from few years ago.

2. Using quotes for exact matches often doesn't work for me either.

Is this happening for others too?

Yes and yes. Its getting ridiculous..

I believe the first example is specifically a reddit problem, due to something they did with their date data.

I always search reddit for reviews and at some point, even though the result says "5 days ago" on Google, the result is actually years old when clicking through to reddit.

I remember having similar issues with more than Reddit. If I remember right, I had similar problems with Quora as well as StackOverflow. I specifically remember this working fine for me and then suddenly it broke for multiple sites. This was maybe 2 years ago though.

I stopped using google mainly for these two issues about a couple years ago and honestly, I completely forgot that these issues can be a thing.

To be honest, I'm using Google because it usually works so well. Hiding the option, without stopping the underlying tracking and data collection, is just denial.

The best solution, IMO, is using Firefox with First-Party Isolation enabled, Multi-Account Containers, and Cookie Auto-Delete.

This way you can whitelist sites per-container for persistence, while starting with a clean slate everywhere else on the web.

Adding a VPN makes fingerprinting just a bit harder, when combined with Firefox's anti-fingerprinting settings.

It would be great if Firefox allowed us to create "fake" e-mail addresses too, so we can subscribe to different services without giving away our identities.

I’m guessing your alluding to duckduckgo’s recent announcement around private email addresses.

https://www.spreadprivacy.com/introducing-email-protection-b...

They do, It's called Firefox Relay. https://relay.firefox.com/

anyone here knows if Firefox VPN income is still routed through Mozilla Corporation (the makers of Firefox) or if it goes directly to Mozilla Foundation and becomes useless for browser development?

(Because my main reason for using Firefox VPN would be to support browser development.)

Wouldn't it be possible for companies to simply reject e-mail addresses that end with "@relay.firefox.com"?

EDIT: Ok, it is answered in the FAQ:

> Why won’t a site accept my ⁨Relay⁩ alias?

> Some sites may not accept an email address that includes a subdomain (i.e., the “relay” portion of @relay.firefox.com) and others have stopped accepting all addresses except those from Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo accounts. As ⁨Firefox Relay⁩ grows in popularity and issues more aliases, our service might be placed on a blocklist. If you are not able to use a ⁨Relay⁩ alias, please let us know.

I actually find the "personal" results useful so when I search for something like "python bug" I get things about issues with Python, not insects and snakes in the wilderness.

Finding issues with Python is the default result for that query, regardless of your user preferences. Finding things about insects and snakes in the wilderness would actually be an example of personal results giving you what you want. Computer related stuff tend to have a stronger online presence than other subjects for obvious reasons.

It's meant for when you have a flight ticket in your Gmail or a restaurant reservation then if you search the name of the restaurant or flights on Google it'll display a link to your email among the search results. I think it's a brilliant feature and hope they expand it to many other receipts type things in Gmail

I wish there were a way to turn off personal results based upon country. It feels like google isolates us even further culturally.

When I'm in Japan I can search for japanese things easily, but when i'm in america it keeps giving me american-based websites with japanese stuff. I've legit used a VPN just for searching.

For those of us who aren't constantly logged into Google, the link is simply to a login page.

The page is one where you can change a Google account setting for "whether Search can show you personal results based on info in your Google Account"

"Personalised results" should be something users turn on if they want to try it, not something they have to turn off.

User control is not Google's main priority. Money first. Defaults matter.

One of their current CEO's main projects before he became CEO was convincing vendors to pre-install a Google search bar. This is not something that can be "turned off". Most users do not change settings, let alone even know they exist.

Because of this reality, its defaults that really matter, not options. The defaults chosen define the intent of the company.

personalized results are the only reason i, and many others like me, use google. if ddg offered them, i would use ddg.

I used to think the same, but it only results in you going deeper into your own well as Google keeps pushing more of the same shit instead of getting something new/fresh. It also happens on YouTube.

YouTube could be so great, there's tons of great content out there waiting to be seen, it's just impossible to find, the recommendations are complete garbage.

So true. "YouTube search" is not where the money is; it's "recommendations" and "viral videos" that advertising requires. That is the company's priority. If YouTube represents state-of-the-art in "personalisation", that's a very low bar for "improvement" over manual search. Absolute garbage. It reminds me of paid placement in the Alta Vista era because "recommended" results are interpersed with the legitimate search results.

I would think the reason people use DDG is because DDG does not "personalise" results. In other words, people choose DDG because DDG's defaults are in this respect unlike Google's.

What is it you get from personalized? I’ve used DDG for 6 years now, and I don’t really understand what I’m missing out on.

We’re at a point where if DDG can’t find something, then neither can Google.

DDG is just white-labelled Bing. Go to bing.com, they'll do personalized results.

DDG does not forward user data (IP etc) to bing AFAIK. I see it as a reverse proxy to bing.

What do Bing syndicates say/not say/write?

Ecosia: https://info.ecosia.org/privacy

- IP address (obfuscated), user agent string, search term, and some settings like your country and language setting.

- Additionally, by default Ecosia sets a Bing-specific “Client ID” parameter to improve the quality of your search results. If your browser has “Do Not Track” enabled, we disable the “Client ID” automatically.

Qwant: https://about.qwant.com/en/legal/confidentialite/

– The first three bytes of your IP address;

– A salted hash generated from: your IP address, your User Agent and a salt that changes at least every 3 months.

Neeva https://neeva.com/privacy

- I heard that they pass first 3 octets of IP (as I have heard from others seeking syndication with Microsoft) - edit: CEO Sridhar explains that in this podcast (40 minutes in) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/recode-decode-sridhar-...

DDG https://duckduckgo.com/privacy

- Not declared but say "What search engines generally do when they anonymize data is get rid of part of your IP address or turn it into something that doesn't look exactly like an IP address."

Self-disclosure: CEO of Mojeek search engine

Great answer, thank you!

That's amusing.

Personalized results are the reason I stopped using Google and switched to DDG, this option might actually make me give Google another try.

"personalized results are the only reason, i ... use google"

Bing and some other search engines offer personalised results, too.

Is there a toggle for "don't scrub content we have deemed 'misinformation' from search results"?

Isn't there a simpler solution to this... Just don't sign in!

That switch has been there for a while, no?

Mine was already off, for all it matters

I find it ridiculous how pathethically people "fight" for their privacy when they type their complaints on a smartphone. Just stop bitching

You're assuming things unreasonably, and in any case more privacy is good even if it's not total.

This isn't exactly news.

Thank you!!!!!

It would be so wonderful to see ex-Google employees founding a new search engine company that is almost as good as Google. Next day they go bankrupt as there is no money inflow without selling our data, but that would be at least one nice day.

Someone please invent something that solves this awful problem.

https://neeva.com/ ("Get 3 months free, then just $4.95 per month.")

(Haven't tried it so I don't know how good it is.)

(They have many posts under https://neeva.com/learn that seem to be anti-Google in slant while being well-informed, as they come from people very familiar with the ad industry and Google's ad business.)

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