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February 03, 2007
Google changes
Google changes: Signficant shift... logging into any Google service now stores your searches against your name, and re-orders search results to match your prior history. That's the default; you can sign out or customize settings to reduce Google's overt awareness of you. Danny Sullivan has a full walkthrough and looks at some implications. One side-effect: "Google URLs" will no longer work the same for all people... a link to a search term can show different results for someone with a skewed Google profile. I think this is a must-read article, and I thank Danny for giving such a clear overview of the changes.
Posted by JohnDowdell at February 3, 2007 08:00 AM
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Comments
A quick sidenote on this, i noticed in the article he complains at the Search History is enabled by default.
The same thing annoys me with the flashplayer install where the Yahoo toolbar is enabled by default. Several times i see ppl have it installed, and i ask them if they installed it. Not a single time have i met anyone that installed it on purpose, and they dont know where they got it and want me to remove it...
Im pretty sure that atleast 50% of them got it from the flashplayer install.
I really wish Adobe would remove it, as i see it as a credibilityissue, and i dont want to push Yahoo toolbar on people. Too many times i see people with five toolbars which they have no idea where came from.
Posted by: ven at February 3, 2007 05:48 PM
That's a good issue to bring up, thanks. Such third-party offers provide revenues which subsidize the free clientside deployment, sometimes in excess of revenues from authoring tools. I can see the business case for such deals.
I think the interface is a little simpler in the Adobe cases, though... Danny spends a good amount of time describing which page-refreshes to trigger to control your exposure. Also, Google's opt-out is a membership situation, rather than a one-time download situation, which leads to different user expectations. I'd personally prefer default-no too, but I'm glad the additional download offers are clearly presented. (I'd also prefer that citizens not be compelled to finance the United Nations, for instance, but I'm sort of resigned to that by this point... it's a life of compromises.)
If you'd like to be sure that your request is logged directly by the Flash Player team, then the feature request will get it there. I'll be able to informally confirm "punt the toolbars" sentiment within Adobe, but for metrics, it would be the wishlist.
Posted by: John Dowdell at February 3, 2007 07:10 PM