Google Adds Search History Feature

Philipp Lenssen writes "Google has released My Search History (Beta). Login with your Google account (like your Gmail account), and a search history feature will be integrated right into the Google.com homepage. You can then retrieve pages you've previously found by either clicking on calendar dates, or by performing a full-text search. Other features are available as well."

Safari likes to cache searches too

[EvilStein]

It's annoying as hell, because it tries to auto-fill your searches. It does it at the worst times, too. I was sitting down with my g/f and was Googling for something and it was happily showing a list of things that I had searched for, giving away the fact that I was looking for restaurants to visit.

I'm just glad I wasn't Googling for "itch on my nads" or anything like that. Sheesh.

Interesting

[That's Unpossible!]

When this feature is enabled, Google adds an "onmousedown" event to the search result links which makes you hit their servers first, and then they redirect you to the page you requested. You might not even notice this is happening since you can't see in the status bar that the URL you are visiting is different. (And since they are not using any status bar text changing tricks to fool you, the Firefox settings to prevent people from changing the status bar text would have no effect, obviously.)

I think this feature is pretty damn cool, and I have no reason not to trust Google will adhere to their privacy policy and not abuse this information. I am sure the privacy nuts (i.e. those that like to have knee-jerk reactions to anything that even hints at privacy implications ::cough michael ::cough) ought to love this.

You can turn the tracking off easily by pressing the "pause" button in your Google History page, or by going to your google account settings and selecting "Delete History." I verified this causes the onmousedown code to disappear completely.

Re:Paranoid here we go..

[Big Mark]

I don't mind my privacy being violated as I'm far too lazy to actually bookmark things I want to visit again.

This is really true.

Re:Internet appliance anyone??

[rdwald]

Actually, that's what I've been doing for the past school year. My main machine's hard drive died, but all the computer labs have some brower, some IM client, and some word processor; with Gmail for email and data storage, I don't need a personal machine.

Cute

[M3wThr33]

I find this funny because I've been using A9 for the longest time and it already does this. I wonder how many other features they'll borrow from A9?

Never!

[raehl]

If google tracks search terms, they've been hiding it very well [google.com].

Re:I forsee

[Anonymous Coward]

Privacy conscious surfers do:

1) Use Firefox

2) Set cookies to expire at end of session

3) Disable referrers (the web works without referrers, it really does)

4) Avoid fixed IP addresses (I'm serious. There are databases which link IP addresses to mail addresses. I've experienced strong correlations between spam and things I've searched and visited websites about, and I don't mean porn.)

5) Avoid logins unless absolutely required (Well, duh)

Re:Paranoid here we go..

[anthony_dipierro]

However, if you turn this service on, they also track which links you click on in the search results.

They're also then able to tie all of your IP addresses together.

Upon your first visit to Google, a cookie is sent to your computer that uniquely identifies your browser.

Yes, and upon my first visit to google, I told Firefox to deny the cookie and deny any further cookies from google.com. So yes, they can track my usage between different IP addresses, but I seriously doubt they're tracking all my searches throughout my entire lifetime (it's possible, but it'd be pretty hard and without getting a subpoena from my ISP it'd probably just be a best guess).

I don't see a problem with either thing since they are up-front about what they are doing and the privacy policy is clear about how they use this information.

Well, I see a problem with it, in that I don't want to be tracked in this way. But as long as they're upfront about it I don't think they're doing anything unethical.

One thing they aren't upfront about is just how long they keep this data. If it's only a month or two, it's not so bad. But if they keep a record of every search that someone has done in her lifetime, I think that's pretty bad.

Re:Paranoid here we go..

[weopenlatest]

Actually, you could get those stats (although with a slight margin of error) anonymously if you based them on a one way hash of the ip (or whatever is used as a unique identifier). What you can't do is verify this with a closed system. So the real question is, do you believe the the 'do no evil' google people really respect our privacy enough to do truly anonymous logging.

slashgoogle?

[diegocgteleline.es]

Someone should start it. Seriously, google seems to produce new things every two days or so.

Re:Now, I will no longer use Google...

[barfy]

No it's not. It is a history of my behavior on the Internet. A behavior that because it now exists as a history that is personally identifiable to me. Means that I can now be *profiled*. Maybe because I like to look at DeCSS code, or lock smithing information, or how do you make a bomb out of fertalizer, and yeah maybe I did even search for some pr0n. Not that I did any of this, but lets say I did. I did nothing but search for information that exists.

One only needs to look at the Patriot Act if you do not believe that if this information is all neat and nicely packaged up that I would not recieve way more scrutiny in my life than I want. Sorry, I guess I use google via anonymizer, but no one asked me if I wanted them to do this. (And whose to say "opting-out" just keeps me from seeing what they are saving.

Re:Now, I will no longer use Google...

[Anonymous Coward]

Disable cookies for google.com

If you use gmail use IE and enable cookies but don't use IE for anything else. For your browsing and searching use Firefox/Opera but keep cookies disabled.

Importing old searches

[Beautyon]

Hmmm can I import all the old searches that Google has stored against my cookie?

If not, why not?

Kind of pointless if you use Google Desktop Search

[RotJ]

GDS keeps track of your Internet history, so you can actually search (and view) the cached contents (from multiple dates) of the sites you've visited with Firefox or IE. I only use GDS for this function, as I'm organized enough to know where I've put specific files on my HD. I don't use AIM or email much either. It also only searches the first 5000 words of a textfile, so it's useless for my IRC logs as well.

Google Search history keeps track of which pages you've visited through Google, but Google Desktop Search keeps track of every page you visit.

As a sidenote, I discovered that GDS merely takes a system screenshot [onlinehome.us] to generate its website thumbnails.

Re:A9 does it with a plugin

[artifex2004]

Just to clarify (disclaimer, I'm a happy A9 employee), A9 saves the search history on the server.

Okay, so tell us honestly: when you delete old searches, they stay recorded on the server, don't they?