Concerns Over Google Modifying SSL Behavior 130
Lauren Weinstein writes "Google is handling SSL search queries on https://www.google.com/ in a manner significantly different than the standard, expected SSL end-to-end behavior — specifically relating to referer query data. These changes give the potential appearance of favoring sites that buy ads from Google. Regardless of the actual intentions, I do not believe that this appearance is in the best interests of Google in the long run."
overriding browser how? (Score:4, Interesting)
Google passes Referer info from https to http how?
The site should get this data (Score:5, Interesting)
If I am paying per click for certain search terms, then this data SHOULD be passed along. The other alternative is to just get a bill from google and trust that it is accurate?
As an advertiser I need this information. First to make sure I get the clicks google is charging for me, and more importantly to determine which words don't have a conversion rate worth paying for.
Gripe (Score:3, Interesting)
You know, if people don't like how Google runs their business: 1) Don't use it. 2) Start your own competitor. Google wasn't the first search engine. You can go somewhere else, but don't tell them how they should run their own business. That's nebby.
I hate Referer (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Highlight my search terms in the page. You don't need to highlight every instance of 'of' in the page, and even highlighting the keywords is distracting.
2) Put a big fat "Welcome Google User!" (often with horribly colored letters for Google) that beg you to subscribe to the RSS feed.
I wish there was a chrome extension to hide referrer data just so that I could avoid that.
BTW: If you want an example of useless highlighting, google for VirtualBox and click on the VirtualBox website. I can't believe someone thought that people who can comprehend what VirtualBox is don't know how Ctrl+F works.