OT Changes to Google.

[gnm109]

They have made considerable changes to Google and Google Groups as of today, March 1, 2012. The regular Google seems to work as before, but when I go to Google Groups to do searches of newsgroups, it's changed so that it won't search anymore.

I get a page that suggests to me that I should start my own group. I really don't care to do that. I used to use Google Groups to find discussions about machining, tooling and motorcycles, etc. It would take me to past discussions of the particular subject I wanted to search. Often I would find references to this site and PM and others. Now, I can't figure out how to do it.

Also, we should be aware that Google now has new "privacy" rules. It appears that they intend to collect massive amounts of personal information on all of us. There is a method to opt out of this function that is available on Google. I won't post it here but it's easy to locate.

Just wondering if anyone else had noticed this.

[EddyCurr]

Thanks for pointing this out.

There is a method to opt out of this function that is available on Google.
I won't post it here but it's easy to locate.

Would posting the location here somehow violate Village Press Terms of Use?

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[EddyCurr]

Entertaining to see the summary of interests and inferred demographics
Google has associated with my cookie.

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[gnm109]

Thanks for pointing this out.

Would posting the location here somehow violate Village Press Terms of Use?

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I don't know. Thats' why I didn't post it. You can go to Google and use keywords "remove all web history" and it will tell you how to do it.

I also checked some sites such as alt.motorycyle.harley and they will list but I can't open them. Apparently, they are dumping all of their groups in favor of having people set up new ones.

Maybe someone will know more than I and will comment. I used to get some very useful information about machining on Google Groups but I guess I'll have to look elsewhere from now on.

[J Tiers]

As far as I know, this is ONLY if you have a "google account"...... which I assume means you have to have signed up for something.

if you just use their search, and are not some sort of "member", this would not seem to apply.

[CCWKen]

Got news for ya--Google has been collecting data on you for years if you've been using Chrome. It's just that now they have to give you the option to opt-out of certain tracking. But that doesn't mean you will be anonymous on the web. They still collect your IP, sites and search habits.

[dp]

Some time ago when Google announced they were tossing out the last vestiges of legitimacy as a business I put "google" in my proxy gateway so that any URL that contains the word google for any reason is rejected. I've also blocked Google cookies, and in a few more weeks I will be adding blocks to gmail to my mail servers.

Some months ago somebody sent me a joke that included a link to an off-color video on youtube (nothing really bad, just not what I'd like the grand kids to see in my "featured" videos list because I didn't ask for them) and which I clicked on not knowing ahead of time what is was or what it was going to mean. Since that time no matter what I search for on youtube there is always at least one and generally more large chested girls featured and whose video hit counters are in the the hundreds of thousands. I like hooters as much as the next guy but I don't like to be searching for tutorials on EMC Clariion storage arrays and have these lingerie queens pop up. I've blocked cookies and everything else possible, but in fact I have a static IP and it that is what is triggering the problem.

Why is this a problem? Well as I said I have a static IP and also a firewall, and I use NAT behind the firewall to hide internal addresses and to allow lots of computers to use the connection. The same IP is used for all systems behind my firewall and so my wife sees these same big chested megadames and wonders why. I actually have a block of static IPs and will be doing an IP swap on my firewall just to toss all the collected history in the useless information bucket and force them to start over.

I've thought for years that Google is evil and now they make no pretenses about it.

BTW, having google blocked improves the speed of the internet by a stunning amount because I don't download all the Google javascript files and adverts found in so many sites.

I work for a dot com - a large one, in fact, and our site offers up all the usual tracking beacons and analytics and cookies and data mining scripts found even on this bbs. We have been struggling to reduce the page loading time as a major initiative. So I added, one at a time, blocks for all the non-essential stuff we deliver on a first time visitor's initial connection. I did not say how I did it, but in fact I cut loading time significantly without losing a single byte of needed content - that part of our delivered content the customer comes to our site for. Everyone was excited until they learned that 20 seconds of loading time was spy/ad/tracking scripts and beacons and there's no way that is going to get left on the cutting room floor.

I realize that some people don't care, and I don't care that they don't care.

[dp]

As far as I know, this is ONLY if you have a "google account"...... which I assume means you have to have signed up for something.

if you just use their search, and are not some sort of "member", this would not seem to apply.

If you get mail from and send mail to gmail accounts you are being tracked, too. That's just a very small piece of it.

[wb2vsj]

... I don't like to be searching for tutorials on EMC Clariion storage arrays and have these lingerie queens pop up....

Same here- Do a youTube Search on something like "Fly cutter" Click on one of the videos and up it comes along with a list of other recommend videos:

1) Fly Cutter Test
2) Crash Course on Milling
3) Big Hooters <- What the heck!!?
4) Rotary Milling Table
5) etc


I use FF and have all my browsing history erased every time I quit FF and I also run Ghostery to block pixel trackers and the like. But it's a never ending battle.

CLARiiON, eh? I work for EMC in RTP. PM me if I can hep you with something though I worked primarily on the Celerra side. So, no guarantees

Walt

[wb2vsj]

I don't know. Thats' why I didn't post it. You can go to Google and use keywords "remove all web history" and it will tell you how to do it.

...

That trick did work. I had two browsers open (IE and FF) and only one was logged into YouTube.

Same YouTube search in both, both had "Adult" themes in the results.

Did the "remove all web history" from the account that was logged in and refreshed the search results in both. Adult themes vanished in both browsers.

Yep - they are watching the IP address

[Black_Moons]

I recently put *.googleadservices.com into IE's restricted site list, As I found out it was causing a 20 second period loading on any website that called it (ie, used google ads) where IE was totaly locked up, unable to resize or scroll the window, And im getting sick and tired of my 'high speed internet' being slower then dialup because of all these lame scripts trying to steal every little bit of info they can. (Using IE8)

Btw, this was after already putting most of the rest of google into restricted sites, or blocking them via hosts redirect to 127.0.0.1.
Only other thing I have ever bothered to block is that annoying one that appends "For more info read: <someurl>" To everything you copy from the website to your clipboard.

Thank you village press, for using localy hosting GIF ads. They are secure, Fast, and I see no need to block them as they don't make sound or try and pop over things or other annoyances.

[dp]

CLARiiON, eh? I work for EMC in RTP. PM me if I can hep you with something though I worked primarily on the Celerra side. So, no guarantees

Walt

I'm fighting a serious battle with forced flushes and mucking with hi/lo water settings isn't helping. I think it needs a flare update and some SSD's to improve front facing caching but it is close enough to EOL/EOS that we can't justify the cost and down time. Never mind I've been pushing this for years, now!

The system appears to be bi-modal as once it hits a critical IOPS rate it will shift modes, sever cache flushing ensues and remains stable until we stop Oracle logging on at least one system. The solution for now is to buy Oracle Database Appliances with massive DASD storage. I racked 500 lbs of them today. Damned heavy things.

[CCWKen]

If you get mail from and send mail to gmail accounts you are being tracked, too. That's just a very small piece of it.

Absolutely! They also store any names you use in your emails. For future "spelling corrections", they say.

[Evan]

Also, we should be aware that Google now has new "privacy" rules. It appears that they intend to collect massive amounts of personal information on all of us. There is a method to opt out of this function that is available on Google. I won't post it here but it's easy to locate.

They aren't collecting anything that they didn't already collect. What they have done is to consolidate almost all of their services under a single privacy policy and a single data collection database. Previously they had something like 50 different privacy policies and databases so I don't blame them for the changes. From a business standpoint they should have done it long ago.

If you use Chrome you can opt out of nearly everything, better than you can with most other browsers. They need to make sure that is possible or they will be stomped on by governments.

Get the Google Analytics Opt-out Add-on (by Google) and install it. That will turn off the reporting. Turn off cookies if you want just for Google or whomever. Install Ghostery2.4.0 and disable all web beacons etc which turns off 10 different Google collectors as well and nothing will be tracked.

[Evan]

Yep - they are watching the IP address

Everybody is watching IP addresses including me. Any time you visit a post on any thread in this site that has a picture from my server on it I get your IP address. Also, if you visit any of my web sites and get there by using Google I get a list of the search terms you used to find it along with your IP, your browser type, your operating system and what pages you visited.