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| From "Spotted: Search Results Pop-up Feedback" on Nathan Sauser's blog; used with permission. |
Dearest Google:
Y'all just gave me a little survey about my experience with Google Search & privacy. My answers are I think more detailed than I could represent by multiple choice.
Working from memory, the questions (Q), my given answer (A), & my more detailed answer (D):
Q. How often do you use Search?
A. Multiple times a day
D. All the time, for everything. A by no means complete list: researching medical conditions or pharma or remedies; checking out ontological or epistemic hunches about my Universe (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, mathematical); defining words, getting rhymes or synonym/antonyms; basic maths and conversions; getting directions, directory lookups (even though you made this way more difficult), hours of operation (frequently inaccurate, make sure to doublecheck by calling), or numbers/email to contact businesses & people directly (easier if area code is part of query); accessing/preserving info associated with broken or unreachable links; checking recipes, ingredients, historical & current methods of manufacture; checking the background or activity of other users, including myself; geolocation data; accurate contact info; checking the reputation of businesses or software; checking on time and place of events; getting to the bottom of details on current events or discoveries; getting real time info on unfolding events (Twitter is better now); seeing the world from a foreign perspective (incognito with TLD for Google changed, i.e., google.ua or googgle.ru); locating articles or specific images authored by specific people (more difficult); identifying plagiarism or copyright infringement; web development (tutorials, examples, platforms, proxies, APIs, SDKs, Creative Commons licensed content); locating music, podcasts, standup, movies, talks, presentations; locating software, especially if older or if indie; help with projects (DIY, hacks, teardowns, resets, workarounds); getting to specific pages on other sites (e.g.: Wikipedia, YouTube, Genius, StackOverflow, Twitter) especially those into which I prefer not log (Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn). Oh, & monitoring how good Google results are, by contrast to another search engine, like Bing, a metasearch, like Searx, or by googling that for which I know some or all of the answer I would consider 'correct' (like a query that is a title of one of my blog posts, verbatim)(no it has not pulled up the specific post for years now, although it used to).
Q. How much do you trust Google Search?
A. Moderately.
D. I was being nice, in the hopes that you already know or have some good reason for why Google search results are becoming increasingly like the search results I used to get from Yahoo circa 2001.
Q. How much do you agree with "Google respects my privacy"?
A. Neither agree nor disagree.
D. I am an American Citizen, and I have & maintain every expectation of Privacy. As an American I am confident that for me to firmly hold a belief neither it nor myself need 'make sense' — for this there is ample precedent. In addition, I have found Google to be very responsive to the specific needs of its users. (This reminds me to state explicitly that I need Google, specifically, to be a force for Good in the world).
Thank you for your time & attention. I hope you found my feedback useful.
Respectfully,
a female Faust.
(crossposted at faustsstudy.blogspot.com & twitter)
Recent Feedback To @Google:
— a female Faust (@femalefaust) August 29, 2022
y'all just gave me a little survey about my experience with Google Search & privacy. My answers are I think more detailed than I could represent by multiple choice.
(CONTINUED, 1/many)
Be seeing you.
