
Google to include people's Gmail in search results - nreece
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hDGUEKnfeLBLJxy1-55OGw5qs5_Q?docId=dda2c9c5f08045b5a7a23545d4cc1c32
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patrickmclaren
Note that the emails that will be blended with _your_ search results are from
_your_ inbox. This feature does not blend Alice's emails with Bob's search
results, if Alice and Bob have not communicated.

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notregistering
Still, not cool. It is not uncommon for someone to use my machine for a brief
stint. Say we're about to go somewhere and I ask them to print the directions.
I'd rather not have emails from 5 years ago pop up in an innocuous search.

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calciphus
If you use Chrome, just CTRL+SHIFT+N (or CMD+SHFIT+N) and open them in their
own session that auto-expires when you close the window. Then whatever they're
doing is safe for them and they don't kick you out of all your accounts. And
it takes a fraction of a second to do.

"Hey, can I borrow a piece of paper?" "Sure, just grab a page out of my
teenage daughter's journal that she's not using. Flip through until you find
one"

~~~
alan_cx
Er, why am "I" expect to muck around like that to simply protect my privacy,
which was more private in the first place?

Here's an idea, privacy first, ooooh anit we cool coders second. Privacy very
much has to be the default, not google's cleverness or revenue stream.

All I can say is thank the non existent one that I don't use gmail for
anything even vaguely important.

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magicalist
"protect my privacy" is a really poor way to position this argument, if only
for the many times we need to take companies to task for _actually_ violating
people's privacy. This is showing something on screen that you'd rather only
have shown in a different tab.

The only reason you don't have the same reaction to the location bar in your
browser showing browser history is that you're used to it.

If you don't want email results to show up on your search page, just don't
turn it on.

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barista
or just use DDG

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jebblue
If Google starts messing with my email then it might be time to unplug from
_all_ of Google's products.

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kijin
> _in its latest attempt to deliver more personal responses more quickly_

I liked it better when the web was impersonal, when you actually had to make
an effort to filter out the information you didn't want. As more and more of
the top of your search results get cluttered with things that Big Bro knows
that you want, the less and less you are exposed to the world of things that
you never knew you might take an interest in.

Search used to be a way to find marvelous new gems in the ocean of Internet.
Now it's just a reaffirmation of your favorite repertoires, leaving you with
the ultimate confirmation bias in everything you read, buy, and think about.
These days, I can rarely find anything with Google that I didn't already know
about, read about, write about, etc. Half the time, I use Google as a bookmark
manager ... heck, I might as well just search my browser history. Throwing
email history into the mix will only accelerate this trend, shoving each of us
even deeper into our own little holes in the ground. Search has become boring,
an incubator for egocentric brats, and a place where political diversity goes
to die ... all in the name of personalization, i.e. ad revenue.

Nowadays, the only sites that dare to give me non-personalized information
seem to be DuckDuckGo and Wikipedia. Oh, and occasionally Google, when I'm
logged out and freshly rid of cookies.

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jmillikin

      > Nowadays, the only sites that dare to give me
      > non-personalized information seem to be DuckDuckGo and
      > Wikipedia. Oh, and occasionally Google, when I'm logged
      > out and freshly rid of cookies.
    

I don't notice any significant difference in personalized vs non-personalized
results, though personalized results are occasionally more useful.

If you really don't want Google to return personalized results, then click the
"Hide personal results" icon in the top right. This is less annoying than
having to clear all your cookies.

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barista
I think the concern with clearing all cookies is not simply to not see the
personalized results but that the cookies are actually tracking the person's
usage.

Google in recent times has gotten so creepy that I never stay logged in. Same
with Facebook btw.

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wicknicks
I can't understand the motivation for this. The opposite makes more sense.
Where web results are shown with Gmail search. People often use search with
other people looking over their shoulder .. how many times does one browse
emails with a group of people around them?

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jfoutz
Finally a way to search gmail. It's great for mail, but the built in search is
terrible.

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neilkelty
Why do you consider the search terrible? I think it's one of the best email
search experiences out there.

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jfoutz
it's, okay, i guess. i find it odd it returns emails that don't contain all of
my criteria first. I understand the desire for including more recent results.
Probably, it's a lot more economical to not really search all my mail, and
just provide a set from a recent pool of stuff.

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twodayslate
My searches are too personal now. I search for a snippet of code and all I get
are iPhone or Minecraft related results. How do I turn off this personal-
ization of my searches?

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powerslave12r
[http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&a...](http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=54048)

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lani
why isn't there more outrage ?

