The National Security Agency will get to keep secret documents that may, or may not, show a working relationship with Google.
via McClatchy blog: Suits & Sentences.
Google is not part on the internet’s solution. It is part of the problem.
I’m slowly changing details from my now unused gmail account to my live.com email. I have deleted all feeds in Google Reader and am now using Fever – I’ve had this for ages and determined this time to get the most from my purchase. My Youtube lists are deleted. My default search engine in Firefox is Bing. I have no financial details in Google Checkout. Google Chrome is here but unused with the preferred 3rd browser being Opera or Stainless. While I cannot remove history because they won’t have deleted my details for real, they just hide it what I can do is not give them more information. Oh – and the Google+ thing? I have no intention of posting there. I am days away from my facebook account being removed, I have stopped tweeting – why write on twitter and facebook and circles when I have a perfectly decent blog here? After all if I do use those 3 services what else can I put here? Here is mine and while it is of little value it’s about time I rediscovered writing.
Well I do sometimes if absolutely necessary…but not that far.
Google:
“Using a pseudonym has been one of the great benefits of the internet, because it has enabled people to express themselves freely – they may be in physical danger, looking for help, or have a condition they don’t want people to know about,” she wrote in February on Google’s public policy blog.
“People in these circumstances may need a consistent identity, but one that is not linked to their offline self. You can use pseudonyms to upload videos in YouTube or post to Blogger.”
From 31 July, people who have created private profiles in, say, the ad broker’s free email service Gmail will be deleted by Google unless individuals switch it to public view.
It’s no longer possible for individuals to simply log on to YouTube with an anonymous username.
and they still are not open about what they do with all your data. Why in hell do people not see Google as being part of the problem? And you did see that it’s the email privacy that will get you nuked?
“The real hypocrisy here is that Google has started attacking vertical search services by suggesting that this perfectly legitimate form of copying is somehow illegitimate for all vertical search services other than its own.â€The Register
The Register
After the huge amount of investigations that Microsoft went through and that I continue to hope that Apple have to experience (unbundle Safari? iTunes? Would OS X even work?) I really really would like Google to be sliced and diced repeatedly in the EU. I honestly do not believe Google is any part of the solution for the internet which therefore makes it part of the problem.
Google’s search is polluted and it’s really annoying. It’s annoyed me before and I made a big long list of the crap sites but lost it. Over the last couple of days I’ve started it again.
I find these to be spammy, junk and a waste of time looking at let alone visiting:
-wikihow.com
-twenga.co.uk
-squidoo.com
-shopzilla.co.uk
-shopwiki.co.uk
-shopping.com
-pricerunner.co.uk
-priceinspector.co.uk
-pixmania.co.uk
-nextag.com
-mahalo.com
-kelkoo.co.uk
-hubpages.com
-hotukdeals.com
-fixya.com
-findarticles.com
-ezinearticles.com
-ehow.com
-dealtime.co.uk
-buzzle.com
-bidbroo.com
-articlesbase.com
-answers.yahoo.com
-answers.com
and I don’t want to see them in any search results ever for anything. YMMV. But it’s a PITA to enter those before searching. Firefox has the answer though. (Chrome might, didn’t look).
From the search dropdown in the top right choose to add another search engine. I chose Google-UK. Then (on a mac), go to /Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/searchplugins and open up that new xml file. (It’s somewhere here depending on Windows version). Near the bottom it has this:
1 | <os:url type="text/html" method="GET" template="http://www.google.co.uk/search?q={searchTerms}&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&meta=cr%3DcountryUK|countryGB"></os:url> |
and what you need to do (after making that list above into one long line and keeping those minus symbols) is put a + after {searchTerms} then paste the line. In the end it looks like this (slide to compare):
1 | <os:url type="text/html" method="GET" template="http://www.google.co.uk/search?q={searchTerms}+-ehow.com -wikihow.com -ezinearticles.com -articlesbase.com -shopwiki.co.uk -hubpages.com -squidoo.com -shopzilla.co.uk -twenga.co.uk -kelkoo.co.uk -pricerunner.co.uk -pixmania.co.uk -nextag.com -answers.yahoo.com -priceinspector.co.uk -dealtime.co.uk -shopping.com -findarticles.com -answers.com -fixya.com -mahalo.com -buzzle.com -hotukdeals.com -bidbroo.com -.info -.biz -.cn -.co.cc -affiliate&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&meta=cr%3DcountryUK|countryGB"></os:url> |
and now when you search using that engine in your browser you will avoid all the crap. But no, it’s not that easy.
Google limit searches to 32 words and if you use all that then depending on the number of words you input too you will see:
“nextag” (and any subsequent words) was ignored because we limit queries to 32 words.
This makes it slightly more difficult because although I never want to go to answers.com I would like to see someone’s post about the answers to my problem. So I edited mine down:
1 | <os:url type="text/html" method="GET" template="http://www.google.co.uk/search?q={searchTerms}+-ehow -wikihow -ezinearticles -articlesbase -shopwiki -hubpages -squidoo -shopzilla -twenga -kelkoo -pricerunner -pixmania -nextag -priceinspector -dealtime -findarticles -fixya -mahalo -buzzle -hotukdeals -bidbroo -.info -.biz -.cn -.co.cc -affiliatee&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&meta=cr%3DcountryUK|countryGB"></os:url> |
Still, the results when I’m after reviews or purchases are much better.
Discovered this when adding some info to my wife’s reader.
Get the Subscribe bookmarklet from the Google Reader pages
Find a new site to add – for this go to http://psychcentral.com/
Click your Subscribe bookmarklet. Reader opens and shows the link to subscribe to that feed and 8 others.
If you click to subscribe to the Psych Central feed all the others disappear.
If you click one of the others that says no items are unread you have to click to ‘unread’ before looking and then saying ‘No Thanks’, Reader says it has removed the feed and then throws an error.
If you click and there are unread and then click ‘No Thanks’ still get this error – “Oops…an error occurred. Please try again in a few seconds” has been going on for 24+ hours.
So what would I like? For a checkbox next to each and those feeds by default dropped into a “Trial” folder. I get the feed I want and get to not lose those feeds your software has said I might like. Even if the back/forth worked the fact is that I’m not at that point in time wanting to vet sources. All I actually wanted was to subscribe to a single site so saying “More like this” is actually “More like this if you act now because we won’t tell you again”. Isn’t the point of the Subscribe bookmarklet to make everything smooth and easy? So why throw this heap of work up at me?
Making sure you are logged out of all your Google accounts go to http://gmail.com. You want another email account and being the savvy net user you see that you can check availability of a name. Having signed up at places like AIM, Yahoo, MSN etc it saves hassle to get that name checked first. So you put in all the names and each time it says it has been taken but offers you the “random number on the end” crap each time too. Ever hopeful you plough on until all of a sudden it gives you a captcha you need to solve before you can check another. Annoying but you have to. Study the letters, enter them carefully and click ‘Check availability’. In nice red letters it said you got it wrong. You know you did not so you check again, enter carefully again and again you are wrong. Like wtf? One last time. The swirly letters appear and you are sure they say I D I O T S so being super careful you type in I D I O T S and again it tells you you are wrong.
It’s because there are 2 captchas on the page. One right at the bottom. I can’t see it and my monitor is pretty large. Do they give any hint that you should scroll down? No. Do they highlight other boxes in red to hint that completing them may help? No. Does the page move down to the other captcha? No. Do they make the big assumption that everyone will always complete the whole form before checking for a free name? Yes. Can you simply open another browser and continue battering away for new names? Yes. Has this measure stopped the millions of gmail spammers? Not.one.little.bit.
So I wake to find that Google had disabled a GMail account. No reason at all. It cannot have been compromised – I use stupidly long passwords – I have not spammed, it is superlow volume, they just did it for kicks. As everyone who has ever tried to contact them knows Google has no Support team. No-one. Nothing. Support budget? $0. So the option to send a Support request is useless. And what do they want otherwise? My mobile phone number. Those “privacy means sod all unless you work for Google” people want another piece of my information just so they can give me access to my email account. So that account will be closed and I’m off to Hotmail or even another domain of mine. I barely use Google now and I’m no worse off and events like this just make my hatred of them burn brighter.
In the history of technology and innovation, it’s clear that competition delivers the best outcome. Artificial barriers to competition hurt users and developers and, in the long run, stall technological progress.
The company that dominates search, that buys companies and so obliterates the competiton who cannot compete on development and that breaks the law is saying competition is good? Omar hasn’t a clue, not one. Idiot.