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I'm a person, and I hate personalized search exactly because of what personalized search is. I don't want to live in a filter bubble. If I search for my name, I

by maggit 15y ago

I'm a person, and I hate personalized search exactly because of what personalized search is. I don't want to live in a filter bubble. If I search for my name, I obviously want to know what other people would see about me. The same goes for any kind of ego-searching (my software projects, for example) If I search for "where to buy x", I want to see where Google thinks it is best to buy x, regardless of the fact that I am in Norway. Regardless of who I have in my G+ circles. If I want to narrow the search, I can do it myself. Even when I search for "mono", I want to be reminded that the world largely thinks mono means mononucleosis, not the mono compiler and runtime. I am part of the world, dammit, and I don't want Google to go out of their way to avoid showing me that world. I also hate Google's hoarding of information about me, but this hate is completely orthogonal.

spurgu 15y ago
Open an incognito window?
- maggit 15y ago
  As a matter of fact this causes google.com to take me to google.no, contrary to what my settings say (that are active when I'm not in an incognito window). This is also independent of what my browser language preferences are. I'm not exactly sure if this poisons my search results or not, and I am too tired to look into it right now. But it still makes me worry that I'm seeing skewed search results. Additionally, it is of couse extra work to open an incognito window for every search, so this still means Google's attempt at tailoring the results for me causes me bother.
  - spurgu 15y ago
    I'm personally a fan of personalized search, oftentimes it feels like Google is reading my mind. Which also is what I assume they're aspiring to. However there are times when I need more generalized results and an incognito search seems to do just that, but I'm not surprised if there is some kind of filtering going on even then though.
andylei 15y ago
> I hate personalized search exactly because of what personalized search is i don't understand what your rant is about. just don't use personalized search; its a completely optional feature.
- maggit 15y ago
  >> People don't hate personalized search > I hate personalized search That's what it's about. Just a counter example to a sweeping statement. Although, now it seems that "personalized search" might mean different things to different people; I'm not only talking about Search Plus Your World. I've had to go to extra trouble to get google to show me results not tweaked for Norway. I mean -- I still get to hate it if it is optional, as long as it is bothering me, don't I? :)

by maggit 15y ago

spurgu 15y ago

Open an incognito window?

maggit 15y ago
As a matter of fact this causes google.com to take me to google.no, contrary to what my settings say (that are active when I'm not in an incognito window). This is also independent of what my browser language preferences are. I'm not exactly sure if this poisons my search results or not, and I am too tired to look into it right now. But it still makes me worry that I'm seeing skewed search results. Additionally, it is of couse extra work to open an incognito window for every search, so this still means Google's attempt at tailoring the results for me causes me bother.
- spurgu 15y ago
  I'm personally a fan of personalized search, oftentimes it feels like Google is reading my mind. Which also is what I assume they're aspiring to. However there are times when I need more generalized results and an incognito search seems to do just that, but I'm not surprised if there is some kind of filtering going on even then though.

andylei 15y ago

> I hate personalized search exactly because of what personalized search is i don't understand what your rant is about. just don't use personalized search; its a completely optional feature.

maggit 15y ago
>> People don't hate personalized search > I hate personalized search That's what it's about. Just a counter example to a sweeping statement. Although, now it seems that "personalized search" might mean different things to different people; I'm not only talking about Search Plus Your World. I've had to go to extra trouble to get google to show me results not tweaked for Norway. I mean -- I still get to hate it if it is optional, as long as it is bothering me, don't I? :)