So it would seem that I have become resolutely fed-up with Google at this point. Perhaps I'm just getting old. Perhaps I just find their increasingly insidious use of data mining to be a step too far. Perhaps I've simply lost the plot in a way that has detached me from the
sheepish normal masses.
Actually, there have been several things which have led me to stand on the edge of the search engine cliff looking down at the Internet is distain.
Google's lack of desire to stay signed out should I ever use Webmaster tools
The amount of information that my Android smartphone is venting back to Google on a regular basis, coupled with Google's innate ability to be able to background sync even though background sync services are turned off
The months of being bombarded with smartphone adverts everywhere I go because at one point this year I got a new smartphone and Google now think that every search is an opportunity to get me to buy another one
I don't use other Google accounts or services, so I am never signed in. This means that the only profile they have on my is based upon my static IP ne tblock. Every time I have house guests they pollute the information against the ne tblock and as happened one month, you get a month of lingerie adverts popping up everywhere.
Customised searching is also annoying. If I search for the same thing on my home machine it will be different if I do it at work because Google attempt to filter the results based upon what they think they know about you
(that I need a new smartphone every 2 weeks and copious amounts of lingerie... obviously
). It's just annoying.
The fact that in the fairly recent past, they stopped linking you to the website that you click on in the search results - when you click on a blue link header in Google, it doesn't link you to HPC:Factor
(say
). The message in the status bar in the browser is fake. When you click it now routes to a Google exit tracking server and the bounces it to HPC:Factor
(with all of the correctly modified HTTP and JavaScript to try and hide it
). This slows it down and just adds another layer of insidiousness.
The final one however is a more recent addition. Google appear to be performing a site activity check as part of their exit tracking. This seems to be causing a noticeable lag when you click on search results. This also frequently causes problems for me when browsing obscure sites because if Google detects that the site is down, it doesn't seem to route you to the destination site and a 404 page, it appears to be holding you at the search results. At least this is my hypothesise. It also seems to happen if the site responds slowly because in recent weeks I have become fed-up of clicking link on Google search results and the browser sitting there in perpetuity with no activity going on.
It came to a head last week when I tried to get into the Microsoft.com download centre from a Google search result and Google would not let me. It just sat there. In the end I have top copy paste the information into the search box on Microsoft.com to get to where I wanted to be
(and yes microsoft.com was running slowly as it frequently seems to
).
I blocked access to Google API service off of my network last year. The interesting thing is that it means any site that uses JQuery but doesn't host a local copy of the API file
(i.e. Google gets to follow the user across the Internet like Facebook do with their damn "like" buttons [also blocked]
) doesn't work properly. Half of Yahoo now no longer works, funnily enough along with a large number of other websites.
So this morning I have subsequently removed Google as the default search provider in the browser, on the smartphone and on my intranet.
We were talking about this last week at work and someone mentioned that they have been using a new search engine which has "almost as good results" but is privacy orientated
(currently
).
As is custom it has a stupid name, being "Duck Duck Go" of
http://www.duckduckgo.com/
I have now set this as the default search provider and so far in the last few hours it has been OK - although I haven't done anything too serious so far this morning.
It does lack some things like image search which can be useful. If you need reverse image search
http://www.tineye.com/ is the place to go. They started before Google "me too"'d the idea. Sadly their index is now smaller than Google's is.
I shall see if I can survive.
Has anyone else attempted to escape the Goolactic Empire? Will Darth Tracking Cookie try to convert me back to the dark side?
