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Anonymize your Google searches with the GoogleSharing add-on for Firefox
I find the thought of Google tracking my everyday searches rather disturbing; I'm sure I'm not the only one. GoogleSharing is an experimental Firefox add-on which selectively routes Google searches through an anonymizing proxy. Searches remain very snappy -- and Google is none the wiser.
GoogleSharing is very selective, and anonymizes only your search traffic. GMail, Google Reader, and other such services keep working normally since you don't have to be logged out of Google for it to work.
One side effect worth noting: by default you'll get results from Google.com itself in English, and not from a country-specific Google domain (like, say, google.co.il).
GoogleSharing is currently experimental, so you need to be logged on to addons.mozilla.org to install it. It also warned me about compatibility with my Firefox 3.6 but worked flawlessly anyway.
[via gHacks]
Comments
5
Subscribe to commentsRichardJan 21st 2010 10:25AM
It's an interesting idea and one that I like - especially since i'm happy to give them some information for things like mail and news, but not for general day to day searches.
However, there are two issues. The first is that your searches now go through another site. So in your attempts to avoid Google knowing who you are, you're now letting someone (or something) else know. Are they any better? How do you really know?
Secondly, this will all come to an end as soon as Google block the requests coming from the IP's that are owned by the service. It shouldn't be hard to spot.
I think something which is browser based that temporarily blocks the cookie information going on Google searches (and only Google searches) would be a more useful solution.
RichardJan 21st 2010 10:30AM
Replying to my own post, tsk.
Actually looking at the website, it isn't bad. They give you the code so you can run your own proxy and the Firefox addon can be configured to point to your new server.
They also cover why you can't just strip cookies as Google thinks it's a SPAM bot. Interesting reading.
epavilacionesJan 21st 2010 2:33PM
Love this add on, but sadly it is not compatible with FF3.6.
MJan 21st 2010 3:40PM
www.scroogle.org FTW!
free, fast, no ads, no need for any addons.
chmouelJan 21st 2010 3:04PM
@Richard if you are running from your server you are not anonymize anymore......