Vast Active Library and Information Science blog. From a recent library science graduate in Wellington, New Zealand. A focus on reference and current awareness tools and issues, especially free, web-based resources.

 
Interesting Google privacy issue picked up by Cory at Boing Boing.

" Just before you click on a link on a search-results page, at the "on mousedown" event, Google rewrites the links in its search results with a long redirector URL that is presumably being used to track which search results are being selected most often.

For example, the first search result for a Google search for Boing Boing is listed as "boingboing.net/". If you hover your mouse over the link on the results page, the status-bar in your browser displays the link URL as "http://boingboing.net". However, if you right-click on the link and copy the link location, it is revealed to actually be "http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1& url=http%3A//boingboing.net/&ei=U4gJQ6_fBqKiQevXjYIO" (it will probably be a slightly different URL for you). "

Cory says this is probably benign, but there's a principle here: "Don't be Evil" should surely include being upfront about what information you are collecting about your users. Especially when this is linked to the legendary Google never-expiring cookies....

| posted by Simon at 9:48 pm