Tag: google

How to stop Google from tracking your clicks

Every time you search on google.com and click on one of the results, Google records that click. They’ve likely been doing this for a while, but I’ve only really started noticing it lately because their redirect servers are oftentimes slow, so you can actually see the hand-over happening.

Google is pretty clever about hiding the fact that they are recording the clicks by presenting a different URL when you hover over the a search result. Try this: do a search on google.com and hover over one of the results.

Look at the bottom of your window and see what the link’s URL is. Hey, looks okay, right? Google isn’t redirecting you to one of their servers or anything, right? Well, try clicking on the mouse, but don’t release the mouse button yet. Now look at the status bar:


(This works on Firefox. I’m not sure how it appears on other browsers.)

Aha, the browser reveals the truth. What’s happening is Google is taking you to another site to record this click, then sending you to the real site. There’s two reasons why this is annoying: 1) privacy and 2) it slows down your browsing experience. I’m not really going to discuss the privacy issues here. If you don’t mind Google tracking your clicks (perhaps because they are providing you a free service), that’s fine. However, from a pragmatic point of view, it does slow down your browsing experience.

So how do you turn it off? I’ve discovered a quick way: use Scroogle. Scroogle provides a way to do searches on Google anonymously and doesn’t track your clicks. If you are using Firefox and like to use the search field in the top-right corner of your window, you can install a Scroogle search plugin from here.

I’m going to round up some other ways of bypassing search tracking and will post them here when I get more info. In the meantime, here are some more posts about this issue from other bloggers:

– How to Stop Google, Yahoo & Bing from Tracking Your Clicks
– Why Google keeps your data forever, tracks you with ads
– Facebook Is Tracking Your Every Move on the Web; Here’s How to Stop It

Chromebook: a tough sell

Google put together a cute little ad for their new Chromebook:

The animations and colors are nice, but it doesn’t do a very good job selling the product. From this ad, you can tell Google is run by geeks who are thinking in terms of platforms and the neat things that can be done with new technology and not so much in terms of what end-users are craving.

The ad first makes these basic points:

– Chromebook has no programs, just the web. In fact, it “is” the web.
– Chromebook lets you do everything on the web.
– Chromebook has no “messy” desktop.
– Chromebook can be used anywhere (unlike a laptop?).

I suspect the last point had to be made because people, rightfully, would start wondering, “what if I don’t have internet connection? Can I still use it?” As for the other points, I don’t see them as convincing reasons to move away from a typical Mac or Windows machine.

Well, then they get onto their other points:

– Chromebook starts up quickly.
– Chromebook doesn’t have annoying updates. It does have updates, but they are automatic.
– Chromebook needs no virus protection.
– Chromebook won’t lose your stuff if you toss it in the river.
– Chromebook is “kind of a new thought.”

Again, the above points are nice-to-haves, certainly, but nothing to sell a platform on. What Chromebook needs is a killer app that showcases why a computer with just a browser is better than one with a browser and thousands of other apps.

Regarding virus protection: early on, I suspect it wouldn’t need to require virus protection. However, the likelihood of a platform having viruses is partly a function of the number of users on that platform. ChromeOS can and will get viruses. Any computer that can run bits can get viruses. There are many vectors of entry to run unsigned code, and apps are only one way.

Finally, it’s not really a new thought. The idea of “Dumb” terminals and internet appliances have been around forever.

I’m sure there will be more Chromebook ads in the future, but this first one doesn’t do much to sell the platform. What would really sell it is they had some examples of things that it can do that other platforms cannot. Some video of some actual useful scenarios and features would go a long way.

The thing that ultimately makes Chromebook a tough sell is how it can easily be explained to non-techie people: Chromebook is just a regular laptop that has a web browser and nothing else. They probably won’t listen to the rest of the sales pitch after that.