I am a religious scroogle user, a program that sits on top of Google allowing your searches to go unrecorded and unobserved by Google. Within the last hour, though, unfortunately my search yields the following message. This is a huge drag.....
We regret to announce that our Google scraper may have to be permanently retired, thanks to a change at Google. It depends on whether Google is willing to restore the simple interface that we've been scraping since Scroogle started five years ago. Actually, we've been using that interface for scraping since Google-Watch.org began in 2002.
This interface was remarkably stable all that time. During those eight years there were only about five changes that required some programming adjustments. Also, this interface was available at every Google data center in exactly the same form, which allowed us to use 700 IP addresses for Google.
That interface was at www.google.com/ie but on May 10, 2010 they took it down and inserted a redirect to /toolbar/ie8/sidebar.html. It used to have a search box, and the results it showed were generic during that entire time. It didn't show the snippets unless you moused-over the links it produced (they were there for our program, so that was okay), and it has never had any ads. Our impression was that these results were from Google's basic algorithms, and that extra features and ads were added on top of these generic results. Three years ago Google launched "Universal Search," which meant that they added results from other Google services on their pages. But this simple interface we were using was not affected at all.
Now that interface is gone. It is not possible to continue Scroogle unless we have a simple interface that is stable. Google's main consumer-oriented interface that they want everyone to use is too complex, and changes too frequently, to make our scraping operation possible.
Over the next few days we will attempt to contact Google and determine whether the old interface is gone as a matter of policy at Google, or if they simply have it hidden somewhere and will tell us where it is so that we can continue to use it.
Thank you for your support during these past five years. Check back in a week or so; if we don't hear from Google by next week, I think we can all assume that Google would rather have no Scroogle, and no privacy for searchers, at all.
— Daniel Brandt, Public Information Research, scroogle AT lavabit.com
Con Artists and unemployment webpage
Con artists discover new ways everyday to take benefit from innocent individuals. Online scam is one of the common fraudulent activities of con artists. I know for sure that many of us are aware about this matter. Google has been trying to defeat these scammers. This time it is through spoofing off the Florida unemployment site, FluidNow. How cold can people be when it comes down to them stealing money from people who currently have no money to live off of. These aren't your Robin Hood heroes stealing from the prosperous to feed poor people, they are your scum who rob from the very poor and helpless to fatten their stomachs. That being said, the scam is simple: one unemployment webpage for Florida is www.fluidnow.com, the con artists made a website at wwwfluidnow.com so any time someone makes a basic typo it brings them to another website to file their claims. Even when you have been on the unemployment site, an unsuspecting individual could effortlessly think the unemployment company just changed their webpage.