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Google knows it's you if you did all of that from the same computer.

by manfre 4y ago

LegionMammal978 4y ago
Google is more than capable of doing such basic fingerprinting, but do you have evidence Google uses it for search results? You can do a trivial experiment on another Google platform: open some video on YouTube, leave it, and look at the front page. Then, look at the YouTube front page in a private/incognito tab. (Alternatively, use two different private sessions.) In my experience, no matter what device or network I use, and no matter what the video was, the first page will always show videos related to the one I opened, and the second will always show an extremely generic set of clickbaity videos (likely based on GeoIP). This suggests that Google uses ordinary cookies for basic relevancy ranking.
- notahacker 4y ago
  Considering people switch to Incognito Mode to get different results, it'd be weird and not particularly commercially savvy to frustrate them and feed their paranoia by serving them the same ones. Non-Google search engines and browsers exist. I'm also reminded of a CTO complaining that his test sessions suggested the default Google ads on a page with little text content all related to dating. We pointed out that that from Google's point of view, this was probably a sensible ad-targeting decision for a user running an Incognito mode browser (or any browser without tracking cookies)...
  - LegionMammal978 4y ago
    > Considering people switch to Incognito Mode to get different results, it'd be weird and not particularly commercially savvy to frustrate them and feed their paranoia by serving them the same ones. Non-Google search engines and browsers exist. I just installed Google Chrome on a fresh Windows 10 VM to repeat the experiment outside of Incognito Mode. First, I opened a video. Then, I checked the front page and confirmed that related videos had been added. Then, I closed Chrome, reset the VM's state to before I had visited YouTube, and checked the front page again. (I don't think this scenario would be too indicative of a prying user; I can easily imagine corporate systems that regularly wipe out browser data.) Again, the related videos were replaced with generic videos. I then tried the same thing, except by clearing browsing data through Chrome's UI instead of resetting the VM. The results were the same. Obviously, these observations could all have been manipulated by sufficiently conspiratorial fingerprinting. But the simplest explanation, in the absence of good evidence to the contrary, is that the site uses and respects browser cookies for its recommendations. Thus my request.

Google knows it's you if you did all of that from the same computer.

by manfre 4y ago

Google knows it's you if you did all of that from the same computer.

Google is more than capable of doing such basic fingerprinting, but do you have evidence Google uses it for search results? You can do a trivial experiment on another Google platform: open some video on YouTube, leave it, and look at the front page. Then, look at the YouTube front page in a private/incognito tab. (Alternatively, use two different private sessions.) In my experience, no matter what device or network I use, and no matter what the video was, the first page will always show videos related to the one I opened, and the second will always show an extremely generic set of clickbaity videos (likely based on GeoIP). This suggests that Google uses ordinary cookies for basic relevancy ranking.

notahacker 4y ago
Considering people switch to Incognito Mode to get different results, it'd be weird and not particularly commercially savvy to frustrate them and feed their paranoia by serving them the same ones. Non-Google search engines and browsers exist. I'm also reminded of a CTO complaining that his test sessions suggested the default Google ads on a page with little text content all related to dating. We pointed out that that from Google's point of view, this was probably a sensible ad-targeting decision for a user running an Incognito mode browser (or any browser without tracking cookies)...
- LegionMammal978 4y ago
  > Considering people switch to Incognito Mode to get different results, it'd be weird and not particularly commercially savvy to frustrate them and feed their paranoia by serving them the same ones. Non-Google search engines and browsers exist. I just installed Google Chrome on a fresh Windows 10 VM to repeat the experiment outside of Incognito Mode. First, I opened a video. Then, I checked the front page and confirmed that related videos had been added. Then, I closed Chrome, reset the VM's state to before I had visited YouTube, and checked the front page again. (I don't think this scenario would be too indicative of a prying user; I can easily imagine corporate systems that regularly wipe out browser data.) Again, the related videos were replaced with generic videos. I then tried the same thing, except by clearing browsing data through Chrome's UI instead of resetting the VM. The results were the same. Obviously, these observations could all have been manipulated by sufficiently conspiratorial fingerprinting. But the simplest explanation, in the absence of good evidence to the contrary, is that the site uses and respects browser cookies for its recommendations. Thus my request.