DuckDuckGo Challenges Google on Privacy (With a Billboard in San Francisco)
wired.com
wired.com
I, for one, want Google to be all Orwellian on me because it will mean better search results. I had a scenario like this a few days ago when I googled for "fabric" -- Being a Python developer I was looking for http://fabfile.org and it shows up as the second result while logged in. If I'm not, it won't show up.
This may be the outlier state of mind on HN, but I think in general, as-in billboard advertising, it's not an issue. Am I wrong?
You may trust google with knowing that you searched for "naked bieber pics", but you may not want other websites also knowing your search habits.
In your (frankly terrifying) example, would the site have had to have ranked for "naked bieber pics", showing up in the results and then you click it to pull the search terms? Because that would seem to be pretty innocuous.
Edit: judging by the downvotes, I guess a good bunch of hackers like to live in atrocity!
Many people omit the word, "temporary". The suspicious part of me says they do it so their (mis-quoted) statement appears more bold and uncompromising.
There's been various HN posts about how people circumvent browser privacy settings to track you across websites and even tricks such as generating an almost unique key by hashing together browser, fonts installed, IP address, etc.. I'm not sure of the current state of play in that war though.
I guess if you really don't want people to track private searches with your accounts, use a whole other browser where you're not logged into Google in incognito mode.
Duck duck go actually redirects you in a way so that the referrer is not known to the site. They all think you came from duckduckgo.com. DDG also keeps no logs. Basically your own activity online cannot be used against you.
Now, privacy aside, I really like DDG for other reasons, like search relevance, continuous scrolling, zero-click info, etc. So its kind of win-win for me.
EDIT: It appears that at least one person disagrees with me. So, a quick question: Which takes more effort for the end user, switching to a new search engine or switching to https?
I can tell you that normal people who care also don't know about HTTPS or how to use it. I'm all for Google making it easier to do so, or otherwise stop this personal information from leaking. See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2122431 for some ideas.
Also, FWIW, HTTPS alone doesn't solve the issue completely, as HTTPS->HTTPS traffic still leaks.
If you don't want referral headers to be sent from one website to another, use HTTPS, or turn it off in your browser.
The best would be to just prevent ad networks from collecting this personal information altogether. The only reason I've heard against doing so is that webmasters need search terms for SEO, but they can get them via Webmaster tools.
Failing that, they could make a setting in the http version that turns off the headers. They could also make a setting that defaults to https. And they could make https easier to get to. Currently you can't even do https://google.com/ (you have to type in www.)
And so could Microsoft, Mozilla, Apple, and Opera.
As others have mentioned, this is a good marketing move, but it's not clear to me that you actually care that much about this issue.
When this all started, no one envisioned ad networks and data companies aggregating all this personal information, or even that search terms would be a central part of the Internet.
So now that we know what is going on, why allow this personal information to leak? As far as I can tell, the only reason is so Webmasters can do better at Google SEO. And that reason can be wholly mitigated through the use of Google's Webmaster Tools.
No, Google's webmaster tools only provide a sampling of the data. We used to provide info for only 100 queries. Now we provide it for more queries, but it's still a sample: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/more-data...
Please don't make the argument that the data in our webmaster console is equivalent to the data that websites can currently find in their server logs, because that's not the case.
I'm using it since years and I don't understand all that referrer-privacy hype. Just don't send the referrer.
For privacy reasons, I set it so it forges the referrer to be the root of the destination site if the domain is different too. So when I go to google.com and click on http://www.example.com/foo, the referer it sends is http://www.example.com/ instead of http://www.google.com/searchterm.
I haven't found any sites which this breaks yet...
You're entirely within legal rights to do this, of course. But if everyone did, then sites would have no idea where their traffic is coming from. Morally it is a bit questionable: your browser is blatantly and directly lying to www.example.com about how you got there.
... or if you're super paranoid, disable sending referrer in your browser.
Source: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.http.sendSecureXSiteReferr...
Its silly to rely on trusting the search engine provider to be secure, better be secure on the client side.
With the bangs and the zero-click duck aproaches what I think is a really good solution, for 'fabric' you get : http://duckduckgo.com/?q=fabric Which has in the zero click info all the meanings (including the python library), and if you would want python related results just do: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=python+fabric And it works beautifully...
I guess is a matter of how you are used to search
If I want information on the fabric python library I just search for "python fabric" - works on DuckDuckGo as noted above and also works just fine on Google.
Even if only to stay aware of where your sites (and those of clients) are going to be positioned when customers search for them.
Yes it is, if you're a political activist. Both Yahoo and Google have a proven history spying on people on behalf of government.
[citation needed]
"An Indian man is facing five years in jail for making an "offensive" comment [against Sonya Ghandi] after Google handed his personal data to local police."
http://www.v3.co.uk/vnunet/news/2217063/google-handing-user-...
Yahoo taken to task over China
http://www.boycottyahoo.com/yahoo_taken_to_task_over_china.h...
The personal data that is handed over is email address of the account. It's probably a privacy violation if it's really that hard to find out someone's email address once you know his social network account, but it's not spying on people.
Google's Orkut social networking site
Here is the same story on TechCrunch showing how Google provided more than just an email address:
The owner of the email id Rahul Vaid was traced, using information supplied by Google, to Chakarpur in Gurgaon city of Haryana.
http://techcrunch.com/2008/05/18/hit-pause-on-the-evil-butto...
That makes it even less sensible to call Google "spying" on people when one signup for Google's social network.
You should be taking issue with the governments demanding the records rather than expecting these companies to break the law on your behalf.
That being said, thinking they shouldn't be in a particular country which obligates them to do these things is a much more sound position than just saying they shouldn't follow the law in a few particular cases.
Ultimately, if you know they are operating in a country with a government which likes to do these sorts of things, caveat utilitor. (At least, try not to look so surprised when the police come knocking.)
And because of that I choose to use a 1-man search engine, without loss of quality, while gaining everything last bit of privacy.
And because of this, his stunt of a billboard ad is actually truthful.
The billboard is just noise and you are technically sophisticated enough to know better.
Don't focus on what nouns different parts of the spying apparatus choose to label themselves with, or what other functions they serve. Instead, consider their effects in the context of being a spying apparatus.
That's a really diluted standard for "spying".
The spies that saying warns of were not crawling around in vents with night vision goggles, they were your friends, neighbors, and coworkers who would relay semi-public information to a processing center that used the info towards harmful ends.
I see this situation as a direct analogue. We communicate naturally with a supposedly disinterested or trustworthy party, who then collects that information and distributes it to others, without our best interests in mind.
but, y'know, DuckDuckGo doesn't have to get the majority of people. with their incredibly low costs, if they can get their search market share to even 1%, they can be hugely profitable. and there are at least that many people who care.
It knows that fabric means something in textiles, geology, etc, and that it has multiple meanings in computing. To get Python, just click 'more meanings'
EDIT: I guess my point was already made, so in order to contribute something to the conversation, I'll add this: if there's anything wrong with your search result, you can just click the feedback button in the corner, explain what it is ('not showing official site for x', etc) and it gets fixed really fast.
Or better yet, search for "fabric python" and be done with it, no need for Google storing all your searches at the expense of you typing a few more characters once in a while.
It was result number 7 for me.
Of course it is. Google and Facebook have been pushing the bounds of privacy repeatedly over the years because it is in their financial best interest to do so.
Their primary product isn't search or communication or maps. Their product is plain and simple people's personal information. And, becuase they are a corporation in the USA they are legally bound to maximize shareholder value.
So, of course Google and Facebook have to erode the concept of online privacy. That is their product and that is the value that they are legally bound to maximize.
If they were very clear and up front about this issue, and communicated that information in plain language to their users that would be one thing. But, they don't.
Google doesn't every plainly say, "We track your location with your android phone. We track your searches on Google. We track what sites you visit though our advertising network. We track who you email when you use Gmail. If you use our calendar, we know what your schedule is. We track who you call when you use Google Voice. And, we want you to trust us to do the right thing with that data. We make a crap load of money using everything that we know about you to let other people sell stuff to you. Oh, and by the way, the government can have access to all that data without a search warrant."
So, yes, I do think the privacy issue is pretty important. You have a couple of massive corporations who are for all intents and purposes forced to erode people's concept of privacy. And, if people are going to compete with Google, one of the areas they are very vulnerable is in the area of privacy. Gabriel has been kicking their ass on this, and it's an area where they are vulnerable to competitors.
I say more power to DDG. It's a conversation that needs to be had, and more people need to know about this.
Can you point to a single instance where a company was forced to commit some act that its managers reasonably thought was morally wrong because of the "law" that companies must maximize shareholder value? Personally I think this trope has no basis in fact and cannot explain why Google or any other company is compelled to do things that are wrong.
There are many possible reasons why they would do something you disagree with: maybe they don't think it's wrong. Maybe they actively want to do something bad. Maybe you are not correct in your beliefs about what they are doing. But I think the reason you gave why they need to violate people's privacy is a cop out.
There are also a number of counter-examples where corporations fail to maximize shareholder profits by donating to charity, taking principled environmental stances, etc. I don't know how you or anyone could come to the conclusion that the U.S. legal system rigidly enforces absolute profit maximization.
> Oh, and by the way, the government can have access to all that data without a search warrant.
Don't know where you are getting this from.
I can point to companies that sell tainted drugs, products that contain lead paint, that dump toxic materials in rivers, do shoddy work on oil wells, etc. They don't do this because they are required to maximize shareholder value. They do it because of their pursuit of money. The difference isn't a meaningful one in my mind.
I think if the law was changed and companies were forced to consider societal interest then perhaps things would change for the better. Perhaps not. As it is, the law is a bad one in my opinion.
I provided examples of companies doing bad stuff in the pursuit of money. I opined that a change in the law is needed. The fact that companies doing bad stuff does not equal companies being legally required to bad stuff supports my position. That is, even though there is no law requiring companies to do bad stuff they still sometimes do. I suggested that a change in the law might lead to companies doing bad stuff less frequently.
Again, I don't understand the purpose of your post. Can you clarify?
As a technical matter, there are a number of ways that laws already require companies to consider the broad interests of society. Environmental regulations, taxes, tort law, and various other similar regulations, not to mention the natural pressure that the best interest of society tends to be somewhat compatible with profit, all influence companies to choose the option that is best for society as a whole most of the time. I wonder what specific law you are proposing when you say that laws should be changed to make companies consider the "societal interest."
Pointing out that companies doing bad things is not the same thing as legally requiring them to do bad things is a red herring. It's not germane to the discussion at hand.
"So, of course Google and Facebook have to erode the concept of online privacy [i.e. do bad things]. That is their product and that is the value that they are legally bound to maximize [i.e. the reason they must do bad things is because they are legally required to]."
That is what I was responding to when you responded to me. Since you are so mistaken about what exactly the discussion at hand is, I don't know how you can claim to know what is germane to it.
Pointing out that companies doing bad things is not the same thing as legally requiring them to do bad things is a red herring. It's not germane to the discussion at hand.
There is no legal "law" of such: it's an economic reality, however.
Tobacco companies concealing evidence that nicotine is addictive is sort of the textbook case for this, though you are correct that it is not a law as such. Pretty much every corporation has in its charter a mandate to maximize shareholder value within certain constraints.
Really? I'm surprised that you have a problem believing that people who manage companies might do things of dubious moral value in order to maximize profit. But, if you insist...
It could be easily argued that BP, Halliburton, et al... maximized shareholder value over environmental safety concerns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill
The current recession is largely due to financial services companies creating derivatives out of sub prime mortgages. That is, bundling toxic debt and making it look like a AAA rated investment and selling it for profit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late-2000s_recession
Enron's "...reported financial condition was sustained substantially by institutionalized, systematic, and creatively planned accounting fraud, known as the "Enron scandal""
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron
Vioxx was a drug that I've seen people die from. It was pushed through the FDA approval process and then withdrawn after people started dying from it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rofecoxib
Classic example of corporations producing and selling a drug that was toxic, leading to thousands of horrible birth defects.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide
IBM made a lot of money selling automation systems so the Nazi's could efficiently kill millions in the Holocaust. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust Chiquita Brands has admitted to sponsoring terrorist organizations in Latin America
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doe_v._Chiquita_Brands_Internat...
> Oh, and by the way, the government can have access to all that data without a search warrant.
Don't know where you are getting this from.
Really??? If you insist...
"Under this program, referred to by the Bush administration as the "terrorist surveillance program", part of the broader President's Surveillance Program, the NSA is authorized by executive order to monitor, without search warrants, phone calls, e-mails, Internet activity, text messaging, and other communication involving any party believed by the NSA to be outside the U.S., even if the other end of the communication lies within the U.S." [1]
ref:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_co...
Your NSA link fails for two reasons. First, anyone can access your data without a search warrant if they do it illegally. It is deceptive to suggest that the USG can legally access your data without a search warrant. Second, as a technical matter, the USG can intercept communication between Google and you, but does not have access to Google's stored data. The concern is over the data that is going to be stored since obviously that communication between you and Google was going to happen anyway. DDG is no more safe from this attack surface than Google except inasmuch as they offer SSL search, which Google offers as well.
What you have failed to do is show any evidence at all that companies are legally obliged to be corrupt and greedy.
On your link about warrantless surveillance, scroll down to the long section on legal issues. While there is no question that the government asked for, and got, a lot of that information, the legality of the request is quite a different matter.
And now for the concrete counter-example, when the NSA asked for Qwest's cooperation, they didn't get it. This decision has materially affected Qwest's financials because they were shut out of a lucrative NSA contract.
Now show me the shareholder lawsuit against Qwest for failing to maximize shareholder value by refusing the NSA on this matter.
And, that pressure at times causes people within corporations to do actions of questionable morality.
Prior to the release of the Ford Pinto, Ford's managers were fully aware of a design flaw in the Ford Pinto. As most people know, the gas tank on the car made the car explode in a ball of flames if it was involved in a rear end collision.
Ford's management compared the costs of a redesign to the costs associated with wrongful death lawsuits resulting from this design flaw. It was cheaper for them to pay the wrongful death lawsuits, so that's the decision that was made. It's very clear that this decision was made in an effort to maximize shareholder value, and did not take ethics into consideration whatsoever.
More information on this topic at the link below (Link is "Let Me Duck Duck Go That For You, since DDG is the primary topic of this thread):
Since I don't have a Google account and ban many evil domain names such as googleanalytics.com, facebook.com, they can't track my information already. for me, there is no need to use a search engine with crappy user interface.
Will it necessarily mean better search results or will it mean that you will be subjected to personalized spam produced by those who game Google's system? I think history shows that there will be at least a little of the latter.
Matt Cutts stole the comment show on this one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2063619
The worst thing about this is how blindly news about DDG gets upvoted around here.
Edit: To my down-voters: It doesn't make what I said not true anymore.
When you search for "athlete's foot" on DDG you won't see an add for foot cream the next time you're watching a video on YouTube. That's the sort of tracking Google undeniably does do that users may find troubling (I know I do).
Most users don't know about this level of tracking. Moreover, while referral URLs containing search terms has been the norm for a long time (and IMHO, is not an evil move, just legacy from a privacy perspective), there is no real reason why things must stay this way.
Edit: sorry, I meant you cannot opt-out using http://www.google.com/privacy/ads/ or other HTTP (regular Google) settings.
So yes, DDG is targeting the 800# gorilla in its marketing, but it's not unjustified, nor has DDG claimed on the donttrack.us page that Google is the sole culprit in the destruction of user privacy.
There's a certain amount of opportunism in this billboard/privacy ad campaign here, that much is obvious. But, as a search engine it does not seem unreasonable to call out the failings of your main competitor.
On the site it says "Those sites usually have third-party ads. and those third-parties build profiles about you,"
How are they able to do this? Because Google lets them. That's the message they are sending across to people. The entire campaign is anti-Google only in nature. It's not this fair and balanced reporting on privacy that you're making it out to be.
>nor has DDG claimed on the donttrack.us page that Google is the sole culprit in the destruction of user privacy
Their campaign only talks about Google. That's the only name and logo they ever show or speak of.
Which is true.
> "The entire campaign is anti-Google only in nature."
Well, yes. DDG is a search engine. They are targeting their chief competitor, a search engine, in their marketing.
> "It's not this fair and balanced reporting on privacy that you're making it out to be."
Correction: it's not a comprehensive guide to everything online that violates your privacy. But donttrack.us never claimed to be. You seem to be under the impression that the intent for donttrack.us is an entirely selfless, complete, and comprehensive guide. Now, I'm not affiliated with DDG, but it seems absurd to derive that from the site.
The way I see it is: yes, they're targeting Google, but that's not exactly unfair given that Google is DDG's chief competitor. If you were Subway, running attack ads on McDonald's on the obesity angle, why would you waste your breath also ripping apart I Can't Believe It's Not Butter?
Nothing DDG has said is false, nor (IMHO) have they deceived their users by omission. Everything in this campaign is accurate. I simply don't see the outrage.
Now, whether or not the privacy issue is even worth fretting about, or whether using DDG will reverse the tide of privacy destruction that you're exposed to everywhere else, that's another issue entirely. DDG hasn't claimed that switching from Google will fix all of your privacy woes, but what they do claim is that it will fix the privacy violation that Google directly allows. That seems fair enough.
I'm not deriving that aspect of my argument from the site. I'm deriving it from your argument that it is balanced and makes mention of things outside of Google ("third parties").
>If you were Subway, running attack ads on McDonald's on the obesity angle, why would you waste your breath also ripping apart I Can't Believe It's Not Butter?
If Subway ran an anti-obesity campaign and only mentioned McDonald's I would feel the same way about it because you're making your largest competitor seem worse than they really are by failing to tell the whole story. If you're not going to disclose the entire truth about an industry you shouldn't bother delivering the half-truth simply because it's not worth your time to attack smaller fish.
>Nothing DDG has said is false, nor (IMHO) have they deceived their users by omission
But it is disingenuous to make it appear that Google is the sole search engine or Website that does this or affects users in this way, which is what you said I was being when I made the claim that this is just anti-Google FUD, which it is.
>DDG hasn't claimed that switching from Google will fix all of your privacy woes
That's the impression that I get from donttrack.us and I'm sure that was intentional.
If an ad is going to mention competitors, it is best to just name one competitor in cases like this, where the reader might not have heard of you before.
If the market is more even, mentioning others might be OK. For example, if Honda put in some new safety feature in the CR-V, it would be OK for them to name the Toyota RAV4 and Subaru Forester in their ads, because all three companies are well known to most readers.
Somehow I doubt a reader can frame what donttrack.us says in a good light if you also include Bing and Yahoo. It talks about shady employees, getting hacked, people finding out you have herpes, etc.
>If the market is more even, mentioning others might be OK
>it would be OK for them to name the Toyota RAV4 and Subaru Forester in their ads, because all three companies are well known to most readers
Google, Bing, and Yahoo are known by basically everyone, so I think there is some inconsistency with your argument. That, or you're conflating market-share and mind-share.
It couldn't have been very expensive if they're still advertising an event that ended two months ago...
Still, what's a full page ad in Wired set you back? Solid PR play by DDG.
I put DuckDuckGo at position 3 of Safari's bookmark bar (position 1 being bookmarklet from instapaper and position 2 being bookmarklet for my posterious blog). Then I could just press command-3, and type `!w Al Franken' or `!w faithful place' or `!python tempfile'. Pretty sweet IMHO.
Anyone care to comment on their experiences with billboard ads?
That article says they paid $25000 for their cartoon that tried to make Eric Schmidt look creepy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ouof1OzhL8k
It's entirely possible DDG / Gabriel will have more new users from that article than from a month of the billboard, but of course the article wouldn't have been written if he hadn't done something novel like old-school advertising a new-school product.
I genuinely wonder what DDG would do if Google simply addressed all of their referrer privacy issues. Then what, exactly? Would DDG simply pack up and go home?
It's a fair question.
I spend the vast majority of my time improving the search experience. I would welcome you trying it for a week and giving me your feedback!
I would love it if Google reacted to this by stopping this search leakage.
Always trying to improve!
If the billboard had said "Find what you need faster" (a benefit of special search syntax), it wouldn't be a story. But this billboard is a story.
P.S. Kind of reminds me of when the local KFC put an ad on the billboard that towered over the local Boston Market. It said: "They don't know beans about chicken in Boston." (This was in SC, btw.)
It sounds to me as if the only issue is 3rd party ad networks. The antidote to this seems to me to be more reasonably the web browser's jurisdiction, ie. making the cookie policy more restrictive by default.
edit: oops, I see someone beat me to it!
> Turning off HTTP_REFERER doesn't sound like a very good idea. How would you be able to tell how people found you?
And what if people in general, by default, don't want you to know that and we just got it wrong by default in the browser?
This type of tracking exists for loads of other types of marketing, too. Promo codes, questionnaires that say "where did you find us?" and things like that.
Above all, there's nothing a website can do maliciously with that information alone. An IP address and the page you came in from, that's all there is. The only thing of concern is a feature being provided by the browser which allows spammer.com to write to a cookie that was created by facebook.com right?
I think that sending around the referrer is a necessary part of the interconnectedness of the web. I've noticed in my referral strings before that other bloggers have linked to articles which I wrote, then I've stopped past that blogger's site to have a read of their stuff.
I've noticed a sharp rise recently in services making use of 3rd party cookies, though: FB connect and OAuth generally, and all of Google's stuff (I use a separate browser to stay logged into gmail and calendar so that I'm not logged in as far as Google is concerned for my normal browsing).
What about having sandboxed browser instances which segment off your various web apps in their own little silos?
- is DDG profitable right now?
- is it going to be profitable if their user base grows by 10x? 1000x?
- do they ever expect a need to be profitable?
- if required to be profitable, do they have or foresee a solid business plan that doesn't involve de facto "tracking"?
The referer isn't giving away any private information that the URL of the site isn't giving away already, and as a web publisher, I understand the value of knowing the exact set of terms the user used.
However, I love DuckDuckGo, and try to use it wherever possible, because of other privacy concerns that matter much more to me. The biggest thing I like about DDG is that it doesn't collect or store search history.
He also wrote a blog post on how to change nginx's defaults to not log IP and user agent: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/11/how-to-not-log-p...
I have a feeling Google might be keen to hold onto their duck.com domain a little longer :)
I doubt most webmasters will endeavor to learn N different webmaster control panels, so this recommendation further advantages the leader.
Google might very well respond to the pressure of this campaign by saying, "OK, you got us, we'll change", then laugh all the way to the even-stronger-monopoly bank.
My concern is that compared to referrer-leaking of terms – a standard way to inform webmasters, the same for all search engines – using the Google Webmaster Tools encourages webmasters to develop non-portable Google-specific skills. This cements the leader's position even further.
If your top concern is privacy, Google blurring referrers will help. If your top concern is competition in search and analytics, it hurts.
What's the point of looking at search engine terms except to optimize for them in some way? The optimization is going to be based on a search engine algorithm, and with Google being the most common search engine that's the one most people are going to optimize for.
That was my point: if you're trying to compete in search and analytics, it's not in a vacuum; it's in the context of a specific company's search algorithm. It only makes sense to tweak your performance by referring to that company's website, e.g. Google Webmaster Tools.
It depends which side of the fence your on really, if you use this kind of data to improve your business your for it. If you operate in areas that don't rely on it at all your more likely to be against it.
Why should I, as a user, care about that?
I just think it's silly to pretend that the only concern when making a business or technology decision is the short-sighted impact on consumers/users.
They would like to know this information, and could probably do better business if they did know it. But it would be a breach of my privacy for them to know this information without even asking me for it.
I don't see why websites should continue to be treated differently, just because historically they have been...
Then again, saying "I don't track you" would sound extremely strange.
I guess we (as a society) have become so accustomed to companies requiring large groups of people to be successful. I guess Gabe's ability to take on Google, the biggest tech company this decade, by himself, is a testament to computer programming being so empowering.
RefControl https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/refcontrol/
I've been using it for years.
Edit: found the info, $10m - http://investor.untd.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=328835
(I'm a coder that pines for mudding and visible stars, so the fact that my career choices are NYC/SF is disheartening at times.)
In California, if you work in Silicon Valley you can always live down in the Santa Cruz mountains. If you work in SF you can live in Marin. It is often faster to go from Marin to SOMA than it is to go from the Sunset or Richmond to SOMA. I can't say it's a quick commute from the SC mountains to anywhere, but the option is there. I know Apple has a shuttle bus from Santa Cruz to Cupertino, maybe other firms do, too.
NYC metro is not great for stargazing but I was surprised that there are nice places for hiking upstate, and in NJ and CT. Even Vermont and the Berkshires are accessible for weekend trips.
2. Don't assume everyone cares about things you do. No one gives a hoot if a website they click on knows what page they came from.
I wonder if you can change the text in a couple of week to ".. still tracking. We still don't". This should give those curious another push to go and just try DDG.
> While... but...
Is there a copy editor at Wired?
I think an interesting option would be to have a "what you can know about me" table in the browser that you could fill out. Location, interests, etc. -Your web experience is customizable, but on your terms.
AdBlock will get rid of a lot of stuff (you will be depriving some sites of revenue, use the whitelist if you respect the site.)
There are a few other privacy-related add-ons that I don't have experience with too.
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/epicenter/2011/01/ddg_bill...
Not being sarcastic... that's what I did.
If the comments suggest the article is especially worth reading, then I'll click on. If they don't say much about the article itself or suggest that it's not worth the click, I feel as though I haven't rewarded average behaviour with that page view.
In this case, I checked the HN comments for a direct link to the image because that's honestly all I wanted to see - the design and wording of the billboard. I didn't want the article, comments, masthead, everything else that comes with a news site pageload these days. I use AdBlock so the ads weren't going to reward the site owner and I'd just be chewing up extra bandwidth. When I didn't see a link to the image, I wondered if anyone else might've been looking for one too and thought I'd put one up. Easy to click for those who wanted it, easy to ignore for everyone else.
I assume the couple of downvotes are people thinking along your lines, or being against deep-linking?