3 ms·

Just wow. I'm really starting to anti-trust Google.

modoc 18y ago
Really? I mean how much should they hold themselves back in order to maintain support for other products? I know they're huge, but it's still a free product/service, they shouldn't have to retard their progress to avoid breaking other products. If they decided to stop supporting IE (while potentially bad business) I'd support their right to do so. What exactly do they owe you?
- sant0sk1 18y ago
  Yes they have the right. No they don't owe me anything (save the service I pay them to provide, which is moot to this discussion). But it is my trust and they can still lose it. The fact is that I believe this to be shady, and for a company whose motto is "Don't be evil", they raise the standard for trusting them. A standard which I don't believe they are meeting.
  - anthonyrubin 18y ago
    Do you honestly believe that their intent is to somehow deprive you of information? How exactly is this shady?
    - schammy 18y ago
      Yes. Google damn well knows that no major web browser sends the #hashmark part of the URL in the referrer. They damn well know this breaks every single analytics package out there.
      - anthonyrubin 18y ago
        So you believe that Google did this on purpose and it isn't a limitation of the browsers?
      - modoc 18y ago
        And you think this was their intent? Not to provide a better/faster search experience for THEIR users, but to deprive you of referrer data you were used to? Yes it's a side effect, but it's ridiculous to say that was the intent of the change.
      - Scriptor 18y ago
        I'm amazed at how staunchly biased you're approaching this. Not only does this article take the first leap of paranoia in stating that Google is doing this to sabotage competition, it goes further to say that somehow Google Analytics will be untouched. It is as if that last one was added just to satiate the author's anger: "I don't know how they're gonna do it, but...but...they're bad...'cause they're gonna hurt competition, so they'll find some way of not hurting themselves, they have to!" Besides, the hashmark is a standard of its own when it comes to Ajax applications. Google isn't doing anything suspiciously new with that.
axod 18y ago
They don't owe you that information, sure it's nice I guess... In any event, the only way I can think to do this with an ajax search is to pass every outgoing link click through a redirection script, so that the referrer is rewritten to something useful. However, whilst improving things for webmasters, that would seriously negate the point of using ajax, and be a pain for end users. Google are serving their end users. I don't think trust comes into it TBH. What would you rather google do? not progress and use ajax search, or use a redirection and make a worse experience for end users?
- ryanwaggoner 18y ago
  Unless I'm way off, Google is already doing a redirection script on all outbound clicks. The endpoint url shows up in the footer of the browser on hover, but if you right-click and copy the link location, you get something like: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=4&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FY_Combinator&ei=k8KISfaEJpGksQOturCOBg&usg=AFQjCNGLIQ4vyID6JQEC5r9XGE36mIoZUg&sig2=CZQgmDgORRcK6IceMaiCsQ http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&#38...
  - pj 18y ago
    Yep, that's right. Could this be a subtle move to require people use google Analytics instead of their own log file analysis?
  - schammy 18y ago
    That doesn't affect the referrer though. The referrer is still the link where the click came fromo, which woulld still be e.g. google.com/search?q=whatever The redirect script has been tehre for as long as I remember. It's probably tied in with Google Analytics.
  - lacker 18y ago
    The author says he is seeing referers of just "google.com/" in his logs. If they were redirected wouldn't he be seeing these /url pages instead?
- coderrr 18y ago

modoc 18y ago

Really? I mean how much should they hold themselves back in order to maintain support for other products? I know they're huge, but it's still a free product/service, they shouldn't have to retard their progress to avoid breaking other products. If they decided to stop supporting IE (while potentially bad business) I'd support their right to do so. What exactly do they owe you?

sant0sk1 18y ago
Yes they have the right. No they don't owe me anything (save the service I pay them to provide, which is moot to this discussion). But it is my trust and they can still lose it. The fact is that I believe this to be shady, and for a company whose motto is "Don't be evil", they raise the standard for trusting them. A standard which I don't believe they are meeting.
- anthonyrubin 18y ago
  Do you honestly believe that their intent is to somehow deprive you of information? How exactly is this shady?
  - schammy 18y ago
    Yes. Google damn well knows that no major web browser sends the #hashmark part of the URL in the referrer. They damn well know this breaks every single analytics package out there.
    - anthonyrubin 18y ago
      So you believe that Google did this on purpose and it isn't a limitation of the browsers?
    - modoc 18y ago
      And you think this was their intent? Not to provide a better/faster search experience for THEIR users, but to deprive you of referrer data you were used to? Yes it's a side effect, but it's ridiculous to say that was the intent of the change.
    - Scriptor 18y ago
      I'm amazed at how staunchly biased you're approaching this. Not only does this article take the first leap of paranoia in stating that Google is doing this to sabotage competition, it goes further to say that somehow Google Analytics will be untouched. It is as if that last one was added just to satiate the author's anger: "I don't know how they're gonna do it, but...but...they're bad...'cause they're gonna hurt competition, so they'll find some way of not hurting themselves, they have to!" Besides, the hashmark is a standard of its own when it comes to Ajax applications. Google isn't doing anything suspiciously new with that.

axod 18y ago

They don't owe you that information, sure it's nice I guess... In any event, the only way I can think to do this with an ajax search is to pass every outgoing link click through a redirection script, so that the referrer is rewritten to something useful. However, whilst improving things for webmasters, that would seriously negate the point of using ajax, and be a pain for end users. Google are serving their end users. I don't think trust comes into it TBH. What would you rather google do? not progress and use ajax search, or use a redirection and make a worse experience for end users?

ryanwaggoner 18y ago
Unless I'm way off, Google is already doing a redirection script on all outbound clicks. The endpoint url shows up in the footer of the browser on hover, but if you right-click and copy the link location, you get something like: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=4&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FY_Combinator&ei=k8KISfaEJpGksQOturCOBg&usg=AFQjCNGLIQ4vyID6JQEC5r9XGE36mIoZUg&sig2=CZQgmDgORRcK6IceMaiCsQ http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&#38...
- pj 18y ago
  Yep, that's right. Could this be a subtle move to require people use google Analytics instead of their own log file analysis?
- schammy 18y ago
  That doesn't affect the referrer though. The referrer is still the link where the click came fromo, which woulld still be e.g. google.com/search?q=whatever The redirect script has been tehre for as long as I remember. It's probably tied in with Google Analytics.
- lacker 18y ago
  The author says he is seeing referers of just "google.com/" in his logs. If they were redirected wouldn't he be seeing these /url pages instead?
coderrr 18y ago