Chrome's New Tool Lets You Revisit Your Old Google Rabbit Holes

Posted by msmash

on Tuesday February 08, 2022 @12:33PM from the how-about-that dept.

• • O Brain Fart, Brain Fart, wherefore art thou Brain

    Fart.

    Too much said, but don't want to to propagate.

    • Re:

      *sigh*

      s/to to/it to/

      And I did too preview.

• ›

  Unless you can't access History anymore with CTRL-H

  • Re:

    Interesting.. kind of figured that given the amount of effort folks go to hide/obfuscate their browsing history, the opposite would be a much more welcome feature.

    "hi google, yes please remind me of the state of degeneracy i was in last night after a ketamine/dmt binge. By the light of day Hoe white and the 7 dwarves doesn't sound like nightmare fuel at all!"

    • Re:

      Its really not. Might not be your thing. Gangbangs arent for everyone. Unless dwarves freak you out.

  • Re:

    This so much. I was really frustrated after switching to Chromium to find that it only kept 90 days of browsing history. I often look for materials to teach a course every spring, and was interested in re-finding something I'd seen during prep the year before only to find Chromium/Chrome hadn't been keeping it all (at least on my computer). Such a stupid "feature".

    • 1 hidden comment

    • • Re: Rather pointless

        Why book mark a page, when you can book mark EvERY pAGE and store it under âHistory
• to collect and store even more privacy violating data on their servers. Of course they pinky promise they won't ever look at it.
  • 1 hidden comment

  • Yep, but at the same time them storing this kind of history and letting me access it this way could be... really, really useful for me. I can't count the times I've thought exactly that kind of thing, "I know I saw that on a site when I was looking for info about X, I just don't remember exactly what search terms I was using when I hit it or if it was on a link from another site I found in the search.". I can live with privacy trade-offs when I know what I'm getting out of giving them my data.

    • live with privacy trade-offs

      I'm sure that most people can live with privacy trade-off.

      If they are given the choice.

      But those with auto-updating Chrome installations won't get the choice with a pre-enabled feature.

      • Re:

        Because I'm SURE google isn't keeping this data now anyways without you having access to it.

        If you believe that I have a couple of bridges to sell you. Very good pricing.

    • Re: ...and gives them a perfect pretext

      Nah. Links are visited. I can search again. If it really matters I would have archived what I needed instead of leaving it to the wind or some Google slap-dash abandoned feature. You are doing it wrong.

  • Re:

    Nice comment and it should have been FP. I was trying to figure out the motivation of this feature, but you have clarified it nicely. My original thought was that it was just some kind of weird projection of their own "working" problems. Or maybe even a Stolen Focus antidote of some sort? But my hypothesis didn't seem to make much sense. In terms of google people watching other people trying to use google in this age fake multitasking, it makes quite a bit of sense.

    (Anyone read that book already? I'm eage

    • Re: ...and gives them a perfect pretext

      Yeah, right-click save tabs to bookmark session...or something. I'm sure there is a plugin for this if you really need it. Or you could write your own. I wouldn't be shocked if this was already built in.

      This is clearly a pretext to enhance data collection in the face of cookies being eliminated or domain restricted.

  • Re:

    What makes you think this is in any way a change to the amount of information they collect and store, and how long they keep it? How could you possibly believe that there has ever been a single moment when it was even possible for them to collect more information? For that to be possible, there would have to be information they weren't already collecting.

• Think of how easy it will be for police to find out what you searched for prior to your crime being committed. This is a dream come true. Prosecutors love this one trick!

  • Please put on your thinking cap...

    There's no need for anything you already sent to another party, like a search on Google. This is just try to add an idea to a group of history entries. I do wonder if there is a way to override their name. Like you might appear to be researching how to commit a crime, when you're trying to prevent it (or vice versa).

    Requests for User Information FAQs - https://support.google.com/tra... [google.com]

    "How does Google handle government requests for user information?

    A variety of laws allow government agencies around the w

    • Re:

      Wrong, google rolls over for oppressive regimes because google wants money.

      • Re:

• I’m thinking many won’t want their "totally innocent" *cough* search history available thusly

• For you youngsters that haven't done your research, Vannevar Bush [wikipedia.org]'s original concept for information navigation (including such things as hypertext) in his seminal "As We May Think [theatlantic.com]") considered heavily the concept of session-based academic (and personal) research interest. Interesting to see this finally be put forth in a browser extension.

  Of course, I'd love to see this type of thing saved locally rather than re-referenced in Google's mainframe, but it's still a good starting point for re-popularizing the idea of "saved browsing paths"

  • Re:

    Nice citation. He really was detached from his time in the best way. (Just yesterday I ran across a real-world implementation of one of my ancient ideas. Still thinking about whether I want to buy it or wait for the less expensive Version 2.)

    Too bad there isn't a financial model out there so that people could donate to support the local version of this kind of feature instead of a server-side version. As several posters have pointed out, the server-side version is not necessary motivated by the best interes

  • Re:

    I started to make that point about locally saving to a prior commenter when I thought better of it. Given that people often switch hardware platforms multiple times per day, local storage wouldn't be nearly as useful for many people as having it in the cloud. Google could easily allow the user a choice of Google storage, some other cloud service, or local storage. Of course, they'd never do that. That alone tells you that they'll strip-mine that data until the landscape is unrecognizable.

    I don't use Chrome

    • Re:

      There are a number of different Chromium-based projects that may provide a better option. I only use Chrome for work (since we're using G-Suite, all the info is already going to be there to begin with). For personal browsing, I've been quite satisfied with Brave over the years, with solid privacy defaults that can be tuned even further as needed.

• by GrahamJ ( 241784 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2022 @12:57PM (#62250053)

  Why would anyone give the world's largest ad network their browsing history? That's insane.

  • 1 hidden comment

  • • Re:

      more like ignorance. I bet 90%+ of people who use it don't know Chrome is a spyware platform - Nor have they had it demonstrated just how "creepy" that level of PII cross referenced data hoarding and dot connecting is. I bet the vast majority have never heard the name Snowden either.

      • Re:

        That's because 90% of people don't wear their tinfoil hats too tight like you do.

  • by clarkkent09 ( 1104833 ) on Tuesday February 08, 2022 @01:17PM (#62250137)

    They already have it. If you care about it, don't use Chrome.

    • Re:

      Not mine they don't. And I don't.

• monster, like everyone spends their time mulling over their old Google searches for fun. On the flip side, the government will never need a warrant to seize anyone's computer. They can just query the GGI (Google Government interface for spying on citizens) for everyone search history.
• You didn't know Google tracked and stored forever everything you do.

• "On Tuesday, February 8, 2022, did you or did you not visit the web site 'Invisible Pink Unicorns'; and did you or did you not cause your cursor to rest upon the image of a unicorn's buttocks for 37.52 seconds?"

• What if I'm searching for info on the band "Journey". It shows up on the page "Journeys"? That's confusing.

• If someone is doing important research, they should be bookmarking the sites they find.

  The only value add here is the ability to resume Google session activity (not browser activity) from arbitrary points.

  Another minuscule way Google is conditioning us to be dependent on the Cloud. It makes me wonder what corresponding browser functionality they will hobble or remove to incentivize using this.

• So much for your friend's instructions. No matter how clean your browsing history is when your mother uses the family computer for her latest bead art project Google will be most helpful: Resume research on Analbeads.