Leaked Lies at Google
"Google accidentally leaked their search API on Github."
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Lied that they track users clicks as a factor for search rankings [1][3]
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Lied about using data from Chrome browser for search, including clicks. This contradicted their sworn testimony to the Department of Justice on anti-trust. [1][3]
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Lied about having a sandbox (to prevent “some” or new sites from ranking) [1][2][3]
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Purposefully gave smaller “personal” sites their own category which ranked lower, EVEN IF they had more relevant information. To favor larger brands. [3]
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They after removed the leaked data, but it was already published under an Apache open source license[2]
So now anyone can do whatever with it.
The irony of Google having crappy privacy.
What should you use instead?
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Mojeek:
Best privacy, but they aren’t as well-funded. You gotta know what you want in advance
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MetaGer:
On Hetzner, so if you’re coming through Tor which Hetzner dominates, its a conflict of interest
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SearXNG:
FOSS front-end for an aggregate. Farside.link has many instances.
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Duckduckgo:
They are not that private, but it pains me to say the results are not that bad.
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Brave’s Search:
It’s on Amazon AWS, but not bad indepedent results. As a heads up, if you use the Tor Onion it lets you do it without JavaScript.
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Avoid Chrome browser:
Google Chrome compromises privacy, consumes too much memory, and has security vulnerabilities compared to alternatives
The sources for this article can be found here
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