Also probably worth noting that the W3C doesn't maintain an HTML standard anymore[1]; the WHATWG standard is the definitive one.
Something that's in the spec that matters (WHATWG) but not the one that desperately pretends to still have relevance for HTML though it hasn't since it tried to push XHTML 2 (W3C) isn't “rejected” or “nonstandard” in any meaningful sense.
The company that has an effectively complete control over the "standard" and churns it frequently to discourage competition...
Why should they? I asked them info. They provided a list of links. Why are they entitled to know which of the links I visited?
More importantly they make it a pain in the ass to copy the actual URL of a link without actually clicking it. If you right click a search result link then their JS edits the href to the Google tracking link. So you can’t actually examine the entire URL without risking opening it up and being tracked. At best you get whatever preview your browser shows on hover.
Counting the clicks on the search results page is nowhere near. A cashier in the supermarket knows which items you are buying, it doesn't mean that you are under surveillance.
And most of all, if you are worried about surveillance by Google, why use them at all?
Google search is good because it tracks what links people click and knows when they come back to go to a different url on the page. if 99% of people visit the top result for a query, return, then hit the second one, chances are that the top result never answers what the search query asks.
Google search might have been good over a decade ago but today it's trash.
IME, its still consistently far and away better than the alternatives. Part of the difference in perception of quality may be that over time it has come to use more personal signals to zero in on relevant results, and the people that complain about how bad it is overlap considerably with those who actively seek to deny those signals to Google.
[I wouldn't know. I've been using DDG for so long now, I can't remember the last time I used Google search. Maybe I've forgotten how much better G is. Truth is, though, DDG does what I need of it. Rarely come away without the answer I want. So no temptation to use Google. At. All.]
There have been years since the last time I remember Google actually giving me better results than DDG (except when I only want product sellers, on this case there has been around an year).
Yes, maybe if I let Google see even more of my life, they would be able to get me better results. But they have access to much more than I'm comfortable with already, and the results aren't there.
I am specifically disinterested in existing within an echo chamber.
When I search for a topic, I am looking for information that is most faithful to objective reality. A detailed explanation of the limits of our current understanding, or why my understanding / model is inadequate is orders of magnitude more valuable to me than something that will affirm that I am a smart, special person. Google used to be exceptionally capable of delivering those kinds of results, even if it took some work refining search terms. Over the preceding decade, their effectiveness in this regard has significantly diminished.
Now it's absolutely useless for the hard-to-find information that you most need a search engine for. That's not "objectively better" at all.
Also Google broke a lot of search qualifiers for stupid reasons, like the '+' when they created Google+.
Is this the intention behind everything at Google - advertising/shopping/consumption? If so, congrats to Google I guess.
Of all the tracking Google does, this is by far the most justified, and least concerning to me. I'd rather log out and search anonymously, if my concern was being put in a bubble, rather than block this kind of feedback for search result quality. Then, again, I primarily use DuckDuckGo and I wonder if they do anything similar.
https://i.judge.sh/ragged/Derpy/chrome_5j8fWLGX6J.png
They have an info page on it: https://improivng.duckduckgo.com.