Issue 632 • 25 May – 7 June 2022 51Google manipulates your web
experience
The reason Google became the most
popular search engine, while the likes
of AltaVista, Excite and Lycos fell by
the wayside, was its ability to quickly
deliver accurate results. It sourced these
from a huge index of pages that it
compiled by constantly ‘crawling’ the
web. Over the years, however, Google’s
focus has shifted from prioritising sites
based on the relevance of their content
to those that most closely adhere to
Google’s own standards.
One example of Google attempting to
manipulate the web is its use of accelerated
mobile pages (AMP). Introduced in 2015,
AMP is a system whereby streamlined
versions of web pages are preloaded and
delivered to your browser via Google’s
servers.
When AMP was first announced,
Google said it would help ensure that
multimedia content such as videos and
animations would load rapidly and
behave consistently across desktop and
mobile devices. But the system has been
criticised for allowing Google to favour
AMP links in its search results and use
them to show its own ads, as well as
forcing web designers to create their sites
to Google’s desired specifications or else
slip down the search rankings.
Recently, there’s been a backlash
against Google’s increasing control over
how the web works, and concerns that
AMP allows it to track the content we
view online. Browser developer Brave
(www.brave.com) and privacy-focused
search engine DuckDuckGo (https://
duckduckgo.com) have both started
‘de-AMPing’ search results to let users
bypass the system and access websites
directly rather than viewing their AMP
versions.
“AMP encourages more of the web to be
served from Google’s servers, under Google’s
control and arbitrary non-standards,”
said Brave in a blog post (www.snipca.
com/41830, see screenshot above right).
“AMP is one of many Google strategies to
further monopolise the web, and build a
web where users serve Google, instead of
websites serving users.’’
Google gives no indication that you’re
visiting an AMP site rather than the
original source, which makes its
enforcement of the technology not only
self-serving but somewhat sinister, too.
Also, as Brave points out, AMP can
actually result in pages loading more
slowly than other speed-optimisation
techniques, so its benefits for web users
are negligible.Google collects your data to
target you with ads
It’s hardly breaking news that Google
collects your data – as we’re all too
well aware, it stores details of everything
you search for. However, this is still one of
the strongest arguments for switching to
an alternative search provider.
Officially, Google’s data collection is to
“make services more useful for you”, but
unofficially it’s so that data can be used to
build a profile of you and your interests.
This is then used to target you with morerelevant adverts from its commercial
partners.
You can view your advertising profile
by going to https://myaccount.google.com
and clicking ‘Data and privacy’ in the
left-hand menu. Scroll down to the
‘Things that you’ve done and places
where you’ve been’ section and select
‘Ad personalisation’. Here you’ll see
information about your location,
gender, parental status and age, and what
Google deduces to be your hobbies and
personal and professional interests (see
screenshot below left). Some of its
assumptions are likely to be incorrect,
but it’s still creepy to discover how much
Google knows about you.
Ads based on this data don’t only
appear in your search results, but also
track you around the web to the millions
of other sites and apps in the Google
Display Network (www.snipca.com/41834).
Using an ad blocker such as uBlock
Origin (www.snipca.com/41842) will
hide most of these adverts in your
desktop browser, but it’s much harder to
avoid them on your mobile device.
In fairness to Google, the company has
responded to privacy concerns by making
it easier to review and delete details of
your stored searches, and to turn off ad
personalisation (see screenshot left),
which means you’ll still see adverts, but
not targeted ones. But when other search
engines are able to work perfectly well
without gathering and ‘monetising’ your
personal data, you don’t need to keep
compromising your privacy every time
you search for something online.Brave’s new De-AMP feature will bypass Google’s modified versions of web pagesGoogle gathers your search data to build a
personalised advertising profile of youSearch
STOP
USINGWHY YOU SHOULD STOP USING GOOGLE SEARCH