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Google is not the front page of my internet.

I recently decided to create my own landing page, stored locally on disk, with a funny gif and favicon.ico, and a shortlist of my most used work and personal links (including this site!).

No ads, no tracking. Shockingly - I had to install browser extensions to override the new tab page in both Edge and Chrome. This used to be a built in setting! Shady guys. Very shady.

Although... Not as shady as the fact that Chrome by default sends your entire browsing history to Google for analysis.



> Not as shady as the fact that Chrome by default sends your entire browsing history to Google for analysis.

Citation needed. Are you saying that, as I click around the site here, Google knows what comments threads I'm interested in?

Edit: I think they're talking about the History sync, which does indeed by default send Google every link you visit, but only if you explicitly enable it. We should get access to this data and leak porn preferences of every senator. That ought to get the laws changed quickly.


Yes. And I can prove it to you.

Settings > Sync and Google Services > Other Google Services > Make Searches and Browsing Better.

Underneath the setting it explains, "Send URLs of pages you visit to Google".


we need to expand wiretapping laws to this stuff, the disclosure should be upfront and default off


Indeed. When I discovered this setting existed, and was enabled on all my devices, it made the hairs on my neck stand on end.

I think Today is the day I try moving back to Firefox again. I hope it's gotten snappier.


It's on by default, and history sync is a different setting than what I described. I discovered that actually in checking the setting to describe it in my other reply, I had it enabled on my personal PC. Although I would swear I disabled it a while back.

I would 1000000% never enable this setting. And I suspect that Goog is pulling a Zuck with "accidentally" re-enabling it and hoping nobody notices.


I'd like to set something like this up on an Android tablet.

I have Termux installed and there are a few options for running a simple webserver (e.g., via Python). I've yet to look into hosting my own homepage and directory there, though ... it would be nice and useful to do this.


Oh no my search history




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