So in essence this is for the people who are in denial, right? Toggling the button doesn't effect what or how Google collects your data, only that you can't see it. "Yes I use Google, let Google collect my info, but under no circumstance do I want to see that info." Like what?<p>If you don't want Google scanning your emails, don't use Gmail. Don't want Google seeing all your queries, don't send them to Google in the first place. Use Duckduckgo or some other service.
Ctrl+F shows nobody has mentioned searx yet, so let me - you can have your cake and eat it, too. searx uses modest resources (2G disk/2G RAM, cloud server friendly) and gives you all the results from all the search engines without being tracked in your end-user browser.<p>Here are some existing public instances to get started (visit Preferences! You can choose your own search engines!) and there are many, many more not listed on this page out there:<p><a href="https://searx.space/" rel="nofollow">https://searx.space/</a><p>Give searx a try - what I like most is that it sees the same top result from 2 sources (say, Google and DDG) and places them as a single entry as first, but <i>then</i> offers a link that neither one of those had (say, Mojeek) as the second result. It actually helps you find <i>more</i> content by spreading out your searches to many engines at the same time and giving the best results grouped.
Note that the page says "personal results", not "personalized results". Even though the submitter chose that title, reading the page carefully I don't see mention of customizing the main search results based on my activity. It's about some specific types of results: autocomplete predictions, results from private data and recommendations.
It seems like a statement in today's announcement...<p>> Personal results in Search include... Personal answers based on info in your Google Account, like “my flights” from Gmail<p>...makes some aggressively ambiguous wording in a previous announcement [0] apparent...<p>> Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalization after this change.<p>So I guess anyone who assumed that "Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalization" meant that your Gmail was not being scanned at all was mistaken, since today's setting implies that it was still being scanned for Search personalization?<p>[0] <a href="https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in-the-enterprise-g-suites-gmail-and-consumer-gmail-to-more-closely-align/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in...</a>
I wish I could toggle that switch per requests.<p>In some case I want result relative to my location, or other info, and in other circumstances I want generic results. In some case I want result sorted by most recent first, and others I don't care or want the oldest info. In some case I want results in my mother language and others I want English results as well. Etc. etc.<p>My feeling is that google provides far too few search adjustment knobs and is spoon feeding me with what google thinks that would be relevant for me.<p>The strange thing is that all major search engine are just copying google's behavior on this aspect.
It is clever tactic by privacy invasive industries to give us theoretically all the knobs to configure privacy but make them so confusing, so many, and scattered in so many places and with so many caveats, that within a rounding error, everyone is going to quickly get fatigued, confused and leave the settings as is, which in most cases is opt-out.
I want a setting for "Search for what I actually typed in the search bar" instead of trying to guess what I meant. I was advised to use advanced search syntax and operators but when I do I get a captcha challenge on every other search.
For the last 2 years, I have been having a much hard time searching on Google. Couple quick example:<p>1. The date filter no longer seems to work. For example, if I search for "reddit dating app" and set the date filter to be "Past week" or "Past month", it still shows me results from few years ago.<p>2. Using quotes for exact matches often doesn't work for me either.<p>Is this happening for others too?
To be honest, I'm using Google because it usually works so well. Hiding the option, without stopping the underlying tracking and data collection, is just denial.
The best solution, IMO, is using Firefox with First-Party Isolation enabled, Multi-Account Containers, and Cookie Auto-Delete.<p>This way you can whitelist sites per-container for persistence, while starting with a clean slate everywhere else on the web.<p>Adding a VPN makes fingerprinting just a bit harder, when combined with Firefox's anti-fingerprinting settings.
I actually find the "personal" results useful so when I search for something like "python bug" I get things about issues with Python, not insects and snakes in the wilderness.
It's meant for when you have a flight ticket in your Gmail or a restaurant reservation then if you search the name of the restaurant or flights on Google it'll display a link to your email among the search results.
I think it's a brilliant feature and hope they expand it to many other receipts type things in Gmail
I wish there were a way to turn off personal results based upon country. It feels like google isolates us even further culturally.<p>When I'm in Japan I can search for japanese things easily, but when i'm in america it keeps giving me american-based websites with japanese stuff. I've legit used a VPN just for searching.
"Personalised results" should be something users turn on if they want to try it, not something they have to turn off.<p>User control is not Google's main priority. Money first. Defaults matter.<p>One of their current CEO's main projects before he became CEO was convincing vendors to pre-install a Google search bar. This is not something that can be "turned off". Most users do not change settings, let alone even know they exist.<p>Because of this reality, its defaults that really matter, not options. The defaults chosen define the intent of the company.
It would be so wonderful to see ex-Google employees founding a new search engine company that is almost as good as Google. Next day they go bankrupt as there is no money inflow without selling our data, but that would be at least one nice day.<p>Someone please invent something that solves this awful problem.