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Here's how to easily de-personalize your google experience 1. Disable cookies for encrypted.google.com 2. Set the default search engine to: https://encrypted.

by achille 14y ago

Here's how to easily de-personalize your google experience 1. Disable cookies for encrypted.google.com 2. Set the default search engine to: https://encrypted.google.com/search?&q=%s https://encrypted.google.com/search?&q=%s Edit: Sorry, de-personalize, not anonymize.

epi0Bauqu 14y ago
Anonymize != de-personalize, and this doesn't do either, unfortunately -- though is a good start at protecting yourself.
- achille 14y ago
  Sorry, meant to say depersonalize. Care to expand why this doesn't work? Just ran the same test, and I see the exact same results.
  - epi0Bauqu 14y ago
    Yes, what you said sounds plausible and is indeed intuitive, but we've found it empirically to be untrue. In fact, on fresh private mode browsing (cookies cleared) when people searched for the same result at the same time, we still saw significant variation in results, even in the same country and on non-location results.
    - moultano 14y ago
      This may have nothing to do with personalization. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/search-evaluation-at-google.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/search-evaluation-at-... "We also make use of experiments, in which small fractions of queries are shown results from alternative search approaches." Many small experiments can lead to differences for a reasonably large fraction of queries.
bajsejohannes 14y ago
Thank you. > a person who searches for "Harry Potter," and then for "Amazon," actually wants "Harry Potter" results from Amazon.com Inc. For my case, this would never be true. I would simply append "amazon" to the original search. Now, I could probably train myself to not do that, but I don't want to. I don't want my search engine to have any kind of state, but unfortunately Google thinks I want the opposite. I guess I want Google to be purely functional. The same query will give the same answer, no matter who asks it and no matter where in the world it's asked. I certainly don't want Google to create a little filter bubble just for me.

by achille 14y ago

epi0Bauqu 14y ago

Anonymize != de-personalize, and this doesn't do either, unfortunately -- though is a good start at protecting yourself.

achille 14y ago
Sorry, meant to say depersonalize. Care to expand why this doesn't work? Just ran the same test, and I see the exact same results.
- epi0Bauqu 14y ago
  Yes, what you said sounds plausible and is indeed intuitive, but we've found it empirically to be untrue. In fact, on fresh private mode browsing (cookies cleared) when people searched for the same result at the same time, we still saw significant variation in results, even in the same country and on non-location results.
  - moultano 14y ago
    This may have nothing to do with personalization. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/search-evaluation-at-google.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/search-evaluation-at-... "We also make use of experiments, in which small fractions of queries are shown results from alternative search approaches." Many small experiments can lead to differences for a reasonably large fraction of queries.

bajsejohannes 14y ago

Thank you. > a person who searches for "Harry Potter," and then for "Amazon," actually wants "Harry Potter" results from Amazon.com Inc. For my case, this would never be true. I would simply append "amazon" to the original search. Now, I could probably train myself to not do that, but I don't want to. I don't want my search engine to have any kind of state, but unfortunately Google thinks I want the opposite. I guess I want Google to be purely functional. The same query will give the same answer, no matter who asks it and no matter where in the world it's asked. I certainly don't want Google to create a little filter bubble just for me.