Needs more tables.
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Wow this is really interesting, I hadnât thought to do that. I suppose if any pageâs code represents the vanguard of modern web development (not making a value judgment, just saying), itâs google.com. Iâve been learning more about Googleâs various web technologies (node, angular) and design standards (material design) and itâs really quite amazing especially that they open source it. For someone like me who last did any web development back in the day when Microsoft products and technologies (NT Server, IIS, etc) were so prominent and dealt with their proprietary bullshit its really quite refreshing, even if their intentions arenât exactly altruistic and pure.
I wonder if google.com renders on IE/Netscape 3. Probably does. Even if .01% of the market is still running it, Iâm sure itâs out there, and Iâm sure google wants their business. Bet amazon.com does as well.
That isnât what all that code is forâŠthe ajax search ahead and auto suggests are only a few lines of code tops. Those are surprisingly simple features to code.
Figuring out what all the rest of this code is doing is a total pain in the ass as theyâve obfuscated and compressed everything.
A lot of this code seems to have to to with all the google services they offer from the top right.
A lot of the rest of this code seems to have to do with fingerprinting your browser to determine who you are even if youâve disabled all conventional means of tracking.
youâd think, but it actually isnât. i should clarify, it probably is built with good development practices but that is not what is being served outwardly, that is sadly a nightmare that has been run through all sorts of pre-processors, likely to squeeze size and protect proprietary information as well as track you regardless of countermeasures.
remember you are the product that they sell to advertisers, the search engine is what they provide you for free to entice you to use their service so that they can sell your eyeballs to advertisers. they track everything about your web usage (which is why they offer analytics) so that they can target market to you.
Basically the goole.com page is the all seeing eye of sauron
I use google but i also donât have any illusions that they arenât selling me and extracting as much as the absolutely can about me for those ends.
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lolâŠgood one!
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Seems like a fair deal.
Useful/entertaining things in exchange for advertising.
Sadly Iâm not getting flooded with Star Wars oriented advertising. They arenât doing their job.
The all seeing eye of Sauron must be bored shitless analysing my browsing habits.
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Whatâs more important is if it runs in lynx/elinks/other console stuff.
It usually does, at least in elinks, at least the basic search.
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advertising for useful things can be a fair deal.
invasive tracking across most websites, even when youâve intentionally taken steps not to be tracked (non-consensual), not so much. they go far far far past the consensual trade of eyeballs for stuff. if you use gmail or their mail servers they even mine your private emails both for your content and for the content of every one of your contacts that you send and receive email from. if you have google set as your browsers default search engine or use chrome, then they get whatever you type into your address bar as well, meaning a list of every url you visit, unless youâve turned off the search from address bar feature and arenât using chrome. if you use their public dns servers, again they get a list of every domain you resolve in order to visit. is android on your phone? donât even get me started what they collect there. most people donât realize that google has more information on you then the NSA by a large amount. they are so far up peopleâs business they can see their teeth from the inside.
donât get me wrong, i use google stuff, i just do so knowing full well what they are doing.
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There was some interesting chatter around these parts a couple of years ago about data mining from credit card transactions at Woolworths, a major supermarket here.
They were analysing product purchases and making personal guesses about customers who shopped there, then sending them targeted advertising.
It came to a head when they started pushing baby products to a woman before she realised she was pregnantâŠ
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Oh, it gets spookier than that with Woolworths and Coles. You use their Rewards card, they use that information on your purchasing habits to determine insurance risk. They straight up admitted it.
Getting back on-topic about Google, back in their âDonât Be Evilâ days, wasnât there some guy who used to email Google every time they changed their front page pointing out how many bytes they used, less being better.
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Classy!
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I need to make that the background for the Google search page somehow⊠a few months of that and itâll be internalised.
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Wait a minute slyvbevel, did you steal my profile image idea?? Or did I steal yours :-/ you seem to have actually spent some time making it fit nice in the circle too, I am too lazy D-;
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You had it first.
I wanted a Hitchhikers theme and went looking for something good enough.
The thumbs-up was a hard choice because I know youâre around, but in the end it was the best img. I have to credit finding the Magrathea user card to @ldobe.
I think theyâre different enough, but if this is your turf Iâll move along. 
(Iâll change it in a bit anyway. My green circles are my standard and this is in-between territory.)
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Google is collecting the same level of data that those companies did on a much larger scale, they track your purchases for the vast majority of online retailers, via their ecommerce funnel analytics tracking.
Where these relatively minor data mining players go wrong and where Google has mastered the game, is they spooked their customers, and google is very very careful not to spook their users. Google is constantly saying in every press announcement on this subject âyou can trust us with this dataâ, that is their new mantra replacing âdonât be evilâ. 
The first rule of invasive data stalking is you canât spook the people you are data stalking.
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Hey I was totally joking haha, I didnât come up with it or anything of course, and the more Hitchhiker fans the better really. 
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@udqbpn & @slybevel would you agree that there is a high level of improbability that youâd come up with the same avatar independently? I award you both the Galactic Instituteâs Prize for Extreme Cleverness!
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I need a cup of tea.
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Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
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