alt Hacker Newsgoogle.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update
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Append (for logged out users) to the title.
Gemini does something similar
> The real URL is in the Location header on /goto. Request that URL. Do not follow the redirect.
what? the Location header is the redirect, no?
No longer ?
Google has been encoding the target url for years.
I'm confused. Google has done this for several years already. I have a Firefox extension installed that reverts it - it's several years old.
My monthly reminder to use Kagi instead
I genuinely forget I’m not using Google until I come across articles like this
wow thanks for sharing
I've been using Brave search for a year now, because there is no way to turn off Google AI search.
I don't miss Google at all.
Goodbye you shit company.
"google.com/goto considered harmful"
"There's nothing to explain. You're trying to kidnap what I've rightfully stolen."
Google wants to build up a private web here. We already know this from AMP before.
Also, the search results are total garbage now. Just give it a try and you see how useless the UI is, with AI results first, then tons of commercial go-to entries and only then a few links that are often also totally useless and irrelevant. Google optimised towards crap.
We really need to get rid of Google. Qwant results are now a bit better than before, but still not that great, and I hate that its default UI is a clone of Google. We need more alternatives. Let's get rid of Google once and for all - it has disappointed too many people now.
now is time to start the ai to spam/reverse the - google.com/goto for url resolution, it can't be that hard to reverse engineer how the hash works. It was doable for twitter and YouTube, it will be doable here too...
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Who the hell uses Google still? Kagi is the way to go! Even though it’s paid it’s worth it.
Google Search is dying, and it is showing all the standard symptoms.
why is this such a bad thing? it's not really any different from using a uuid as a user facing key, which basically everyone does.
and trying to protect your moat isn't automatically a bad thing. they clearly feel it's helping competition, so they're closing a hole. competition is good doesn't mean help your competitors.
- coming from someone who's been using fastmail as my personal for ~10 years because i don't want my emails to be backprop fodder
ISPs can presumably correlate the Google query string with the request following the response to the goto and so make a search index? I guess they would charge too much.
Do any large ISPs use visit data to feed into a search index?
It hasn’t provided direct URLs for decades? Not exactly new behaviour.
I’ve got something that will blow your mind. Google now has tracking analytics, for get this, your business’s phone number. Some “Adsense partner” convinced our web admin to install a little script which changes your phone number on your website so they track phone call enquires back to search engine leads / advertising spend.
Yeah no thanks, that was creepy as hell and had it rolled back ASAP. You’ve got to realise the power these tech companies hold over your business. Don’t show up in the search results, someone lists your business as closed in maps, a tracking phone number goes dead so they can’t call you, you might as well have shut up shop and ceased to exist.
I've been using the 'ClearURLs' FF addon for quite a while now, and it gives you the URLs back in the results.
Why can't agents just click on the link and follow it? I don't get it