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The most important parameter of all is missing i.e. ncr (no country redirect), which, ironically stopped working for me in the last few days. Can someone confi

by kori23 14y ago

The most important parameter of all is missing i.e. ncr (no country redirect), which, ironically stopped working for me in the last few days. Can someone confirm that the following query gives non personlized search results?: http://www.google.com/search?q=ubuntu&ncr=1&pws=0 http://www.google.com/search?q=ubuntu&ncr=1&pws=0 btw, this thing has been my #1 complaint with google for years. How hard is to make a completly 'neutral' non personalized version of Google available at a specific adress or with a checkbox in your google account.

falling 14y ago
> How hard is to make […] Since you are on HN, I assume you either are an engineer of some sort or something close to that and you are working on some product, so I expect you to know that the answer to questions that begin like that is very, very often “more than you expected”. (I would like the option of a “neutral” Google Search too)
- kori23 14y ago
  I guess any change to something so big as google search is not simple per se. But my problem is that I think this is their business decision and not a technical problem that needs to be solved as I remember a thread here mentioning that even engineers at Google have a problem with this (that is, personalized seach results)
- chc 14y ago
  Given that it worked that way until recently, I'm sort of inclined to say "Already implemented but UI missing."
timothya 14y ago
It's strange how often I see this complaint about wanting a non-personalized version of Google. On google.com, there is a toggle switch allowing you to turn off personal results on a particular search (it's been there since the launch of SPYW). And if you're looking for a more permanent setting, there's one available in the Google search preferences (available through the gear on the search results page or at https://www.google.com/preferences https://www.google.com/preferences) which allows you to set it to "Do not use personal results".
- MichaelGG 14y ago
  Google still does a horrible job at respecting your browser language. Someone, with very questionable logic, thinks that UI language should be directly related to the physical location of the browser. Even when explicitly specifying English, it still doesn't work. For example, the alt text for Google logos will appear in the "geo-language", regardless of UI setting. Other Google sites, such as blogspot, switch to the geo-language without any apparent way to override. Sometimes, Chrome even kicks in and asks if you'd like to translate the content into the correct language. This is moronic.

by kori23 14y ago

falling 14y ago

> How hard is to make […] Since you are on HN, I assume you either are an engineer of some sort or something close to that and you are working on some product, so I expect you to know that the answer to questions that begin like that is very, very often “more than you expected”. (I would like the option of a “neutral” Google Search too)

kori23 14y ago
I guess any change to something so big as google search is not simple per se. But my problem is that I think this is their business decision and not a technical problem that needs to be solved as I remember a thread here mentioning that even engineers at Google have a problem with this (that is, personalized seach results)
chc 14y ago
Given that it worked that way until recently, I'm sort of inclined to say "Already implemented but UI missing."

timothya 14y ago

It's strange how often I see this complaint about wanting a non-personalized version of Google. On google.com, there is a toggle switch allowing you to turn off personal results on a particular search (it's been there since the launch of SPYW). And if you're looking for a more permanent setting, there's one available in the Google search preferences (available through the gear on the search results page or at https://www.google.com/preferences https://www.google.com/preferences) which allows you to set it to "Do not use personal results".

MichaelGG 14y ago
Google still does a horrible job at respecting your browser language. Someone, with very questionable logic, thinks that UI language should be directly related to the physical location of the browser. Even when explicitly specifying English, it still doesn't work. For example, the alt text for Google logos will appear in the "geo-language", regardless of UI setting. Other Google sites, such as blogspot, switch to the geo-language without any apparent way to override. Sometimes, Chrome even kicks in and asks if you'd like to translate the content into the correct language. This is moronic.