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Comment by mimsee | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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