Re: OT: Strange behavior in Firefox -- google searches start by searching another URL / domain
On Mon, Jun 07, 2021 at 04:28:03PM -0400, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:
> time) when I go to do a google search, the little message down in the lower
> left corner of the screen that typically gives messages like (paraphrased):
> ~"waiting for google.com" or "loading data from google.com" (with variations
> on the URL) sometimes starts with a completely irrelevant URL (but one that I
> recognize and that concerns me).
Let's make sure we understand each other completely here. I believe
what you are doing is:
1) Open firefox. It has a default or nearly-default configuration.
2) Go to www.google.com.
3) Search for something. Doesn't matter what.
4) Hover the mouse on one of the search results. A URL will be shown in
the lower left corner.
5) Actually click the search result. Instead of going to the page that
you saw in the corner prior to clicking, you are redirected through
www.google.com first.
If this is what you mean, then yes, this is how Google works. It's not
specific to Firefox.
If you replace step 4 with "Right-click on the URL and select Copy Link
Location, then paste the URL into a terminal", you'll see that the actual
URL is of the form https://www.google.com/[stuff]&url=https%3A%2F%2F[realURL].
This is how Google knows which link you clicked on.
Ostensibly, they do this so they can "score" their search results and
promote the ones that people click, and demote the ones they don't.
Whatever else they may use this information for... is not public knowledge,
but we can speculate.
So, you may be asking, "Hey, if the real URL that I'm going to visit is
www.google.com/something, why is it showing me www.debian.org in the
corner of the page?" Javascript. The answer is Javascript. It allows
page creators to lie to end users in all kinds of ways.
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