Google is getting creepier

[John Coloccia]

I was surprised, and actually a bit annoyed, when Google started trying to auto-complete my results as I typed them in. Has anyone noticed the new behavior of actually returning search results AS YOU TYPE? That's just downright disturbing.

[Dan Hintz]

I love it... sometimes it leads me down roads I didn't expect.

[David Weaver]

I was surprised, and actually a bit annoyed, when Google started trying to auto-complete my results as I typed them in. Has anyone noticed the new behavior of actually returning search results AS YOU TYPE? That's just downright disturbing.

Yeah, they've got records of everything you type in now because of the autocomplete, too. Best I can tell with a packet sniffer watching my stuff on the outgo, it sends a pack of data and requests information back every single time you type a letter.

I am also not a fan. I'm sure all of the other search engines are doing the same thing, and they probably were before the autocomplete was as advanced.

[Matt Meiser]

You don't think they recorded search results before?

[David Weaver]

That's what I'm saying, that just because we're seeing the evidence of it now doesn't mean that they weren't collecting every letter we typed long before now (and not just google - a catalog of tracking cookies may not store keystroke data, but it tracks our movement to pipe ads to us). I didn't have a packet sniffer running 5 years ago to look, though, just now because the auto-complete made me wonder just how much data they're collecting.

When you check the tracking cookies and then go to their "opt out", it's funny that they tell you you'll be missing out on their special services if you don't allow them to track you.

More user data means more ad revenue and more data to sell or use for market research internally. It's cheap to collect, we're literally giving it away.:)

[John Coloccia]

Oh, I know they've been collecting data for a long time. The creepy part is watching this massive search engine, probably in a big room buried underground in Sunnyvale somewhere, trying to read my mind every time I type a letter. There's just something very Skynet about the whole thing.

[Dan Hintz]

It's ironic... a programmer came up with an implementation for Bing a year before and Microsoft, after careful consideration, said it was worthless.

[Harold Burrell]

Oh, I know they've been collecting data for a long time. The creepy part is watching this massive search engine, probably in a big room buried underground in Sunnyvale somewhere, trying to read my mind every time I type a letter. There's just something very Skynet about the whole thing.

They are actually sucking on your brain everytime you log on...:eek:

[Mitchell Andrus]

They are actually sucking on your brain every time you log on...:eek:


That must be why my fingertips tingle.
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[Mitchell Andrus]

More user data means more ad revenue and more data to sell or use for market research internally. It's cheap to collect, we're literally giving it away.:)

We're not giving it away for free, anyway. We do get a streamlined presentation of like-kind content. I like it. It saves me a whole lot of time when I'm looking for something obscure, and I find value in that.

Turn on the ads on this forum and watch what comes up as you browse the different content categories.
.

[Chris Padilla]

Oh, I know they've been collecting data for a long time. The creepy part is watching this massive search engine, probably in a big room buried underground in Sunnyvale somewhere, trying to read my mind every time I type a letter. There's just something very Skynet about the whole thing.

It's actually in Santa Clara! ;)

[G. Brad Schmidt]

A simple workaround for this annoyance is...

http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=0&hl=en



http://www.clicksmilies.com/auswahl/ernaehrung004.gif (http://www.clicksmilies.com/s1106/ernaehrung/food-drink-smilies.html)

[Chris Damm]

All I do is move the cursor to the right and turn "instant off"!

[John Coloccia]

You can go to "settings" and turn it off permanently there too.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Yeah, they've got records of everything you type in now because of the autocomplete, too. Best I can tell with a packet sniffer watching my stuff on the outgo, it sends a pack of data and requests information back every single time you type a letter.

I am also not a fan. I'm sure all of the other search engines are doing the same thing, and they probably were before the autocomplete was as advanced.

It's so bad now that about the only way you can have any privacy is to pay some Albanian or Chezk rogue military guys put up a satellite just for you, so you can bounce encrypted communications off that.
Proxies are worthless because your ISP maintains eternal records.
Small ISPs who don't make a permanent record of everything are pretty much non existent any more.
Carnivore and Omnivore are ~ ~ ~ well they are almost everywhere.

Marketing people are almost everywhere buying up metadata and lists and pretty much everything else they can that connects yo to any imaginable possible market activity.
I recall the Creek was selling Disks with (I forget) was it images and project posts or just the whole ball of wax - and I don't recall if any one thought to remove all personally identifiable data?
I hope they did.

It would be nice of the Creek could make the site non-searchable to Google and the like what with people using their real names.


But this really blew me away:
One evening my home phone rang.
My wife picked it up.
There was a conversation going on the phone.
It was between a family member and a hotel reservation clerk.
My wife tried to speak into the dialog and no one noticed her - she was the fly on the wall.
Some time later I spoke to that other family member and asked him about it.
He told me that his conversation with the hotel reservation clerk had taken place Six-Months prior to my phone ringing that evening.

Isn't that interesting?
Someone recorded the whole conversation of a mundane banal boring hotel reservation, then some machine (or person?) somewhere made a connection to my home phone and played the recording.

Go figure.

You think the internet is scary?
Who has that sort of capability, to record and keep such useless material and to do what they did with it?

[Brad Wood]

Who has that sort of capability, to record and keep such useless material and to do what they did with it?

Is that a rhetorical question?

First guess would be "No Such Agency"



Back when ISP's still disconnected end user internet connections when there was no activity, even DSL (which was in its infancy), I think the Pres, or Vice Pres, (or something big), came here to the Portland area. A local ISP provided internet service to the office space the FBI had set up for the event (maybe it was secret service).
This was 15 years ago
The FBI kept calling the ISP because their connection kept dropping. The ISP explained that if there is no activity on the connection for a period of time, the connection would drop... and they would have to re-establish the connection
The FBI explained that they were using the connection regularly and it is still kicking them
the ISP examined the activity for the connection and confirmed there was no data transfer taking place, so this is why the connection was dropping.
The FBI agent said something along the lines of "Trust us, there is data. We need your system to stop dropping the connection"

This comes directly from a friend of mine that worked at the ISP in middle management, so it is a reliable source.
The two of us discussed this over lunch one day and neither of us could figure out how they could possible be passing stealth packet streams across the connection.
Conversation ended with us agreeing it was pretty "spooky" and a weee bit concerning.

In any case, I think the suggested or previously used terms is nice. It helps you use terms that have been used before and likely are going to be successful.
I think the way it drills through the database as you type is called Boolean searching

[Mitchell Andrus]

You think the internet is scary? Who has that sort of capability, to record and keep such useless material and to do what they did with it?

I'm guessing you'll not want to hear this:

I have 2 internet stores. When you enter either of my stores you bring info with you that tells me where you were just before arriving and you leave the URL of the next place you go. I can tell how long you stayed, what you looked at, your browser and it's version, your operating system, chip set, ISP, etc., etc....

If you came directly from a search engine, I can see the search engine's name and the search terms you used to get my site's URL on the screen prior to clicking on it.

BOO!

I don't recall anyone telling me I was wondering around in the internet in total obscurity. Do you?
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[Ben Hatcher]

I like it too. It seems like they're giving you the top several searches with those letters. IIRC they used to post the search count next to each one, too. For laughs, or maybe tears, search "why do..." followed by a letter or two. For example, the top result for why do monkeys... yields, why do monkeys throw poop. Ah, the great questions of our society.

[Ron Crosby]

I was surprised, and actually a bit annoyed, when Google started trying to auto-complete my results as I typed them in. Has anyone noticed the new behavior of actually returning search results AS YOU TYPE? That's just downright disturbing.

You can disable that feature. Why don't you do that???

Then you won't be so disturbed and annoyed. :p

[John Coloccia]

All I do is move the cursor to the right and turn "instant off"!


You can go to "settings" and turn it off permanently there too.


You can disable that feature. Why don't you do that???

Then you won't be so disturbed and annoyed. :p

:::sigh:::
:rolleyes:

The point is that it's creepy to have a computer somewhere guess at what you want before you even finish typing it in. I find it pretty creepy at any rate.