Look Mom- No Cookies!
Search and privacy… The heated debates on this topic are countless. Emre started the dialogue on our blog with his post. Thank you all who waited up for part II of this conversation.
Let me ask you a question: How do you want your privacy to be handled? Do you want to opt-in or opt-out. Right now, there is no opt-in option when its comes to search and we are here to change that.
What do I mean? We take a different approach to privacy. We think we should ask you when we are to cross the privacy border and get your permission to do so. hakia.com does NOT place a cookie on your PC when you search at our site. We are the very first search engine not to do so. We will always ask your permission if and when we will have to put a cookie in your PC or cross the privacy line. Before I dive into the specifics, let me put this in perspective for you.
For starters, let’s outline users’ concerns about the privacy approach of most traditional search engines – including the most popular ones: Google, Yahoo, and MSN Live. For the most part, the concerns are around these 3 practices:
- Cookies and personal trackage with unique IDs
- Survey of which results you pick, which pages you go to, via embedded Javascript code
- Saving of your IP and search terms
Ok, let’s translate these practices into plain English and explain you a little about the process and its results.
1. The first thing a traditional search engine does is insert a cookie into your computer – which may sound innocent, as it is now common practice on the Web. But the scary thing is this cookie is used, not only save some language or to detect your browser, but also to give you a unique ID and save your search history. Moreover, this cookie is immortal in most cases! For example, Google’s cookies expire in 2035! Search history is noisy, but it still provides useful information to measure a person’s likes and dislikes.
2. The traditional search engines run java scripts to analyze the relationship between your click and what you searched for. You may be able to disable cookies on your computer but there is very little you can do to stop search engines watching your search behavior this way.
3. Last but not least, the big issue of the keeping search archives… We are all aware about various viewpoints on that.
Let me repeat myself. Our approach on user privacy is different. While you surf along at hakia.com, we do NOT place cookies on your computer and we don’t keep track of your clicks for link analysis. This may sound odd as it may lead you to think this would decrease the quality of the search results. Well, we can afford to provide you with cookieless search because of our technology advantage- our linguistic, meaning-based approach to improve search relevancy. We don’t need to know you personally to deduce what you mean. You already communicate it in your query, in plain English, and we are able to understand you thanks to our semantic capabilities. We are committed to maintain the “no cookie” policy at hakia Web search. If we need to use cookies one day, we will ask your explicit permission and you will decide to opt-in or not. You will know and you will have the choice.
That’s the hakia.com difference when it comes to your privacy…
May 11th, 2007 at 9:17 am
I wrote about it earlier in this piece “Privacy Should Not Be a Trust Issue” – http://www.conceptualist.com/?p=54
So while you say you don’t do something there’s really no way for me to know if you do or don’t. Do I know you? Do I know the people who work at your company? And even if I know all, do I know the people you hired yesterday? I don’t consider privacy to be of any sort of a solved problem when trust must be all over the place.
Kind regards
Sahar Sarid
May 11th, 2007 at 10:18 am
Hi Sahar,
I agree with you. Trust is a really big issue with many variables. Any kind of trust relationship is a journey and takes a long time to travel to build it.
There is a way for you to know if we automatically put cookies into your computer when you come to hakia.com and do a search. Please clear all your cookies and do a hakia search. Check your cookies again. You can do the same exercise with other search engines and see the difference.
We are at the beginning of our journey to build trust with our users. Our different approach, enabled by our technology, gives us some advantages. The rest we have to earn over time.
Cheers,
Melek
May 11th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Hello hakia folks! I’m glad if my post about the steps that Google takes to protect users’ privacy played some part in this discussion.
One minor point: you say that “hakia.com does NOT place a cookie on your PC when you search at our site. We are the very first search engine not to do so.” I’m afraid you’re not the first search engine to try this; I remember one engine not using cookies as early as 2000. TopClick was a privacy-centric search engine that did not store cookies either. They’re no longer in business, but you can read about them here:
http://scout.wisc.edu/Projects/PastProjects/NH/00-03/00-03-17/0010.html
May 11th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Well
ok we agree with the cookie function that u do not place it on our system.
but what about the ip tracking please .for e.g i type for something and the results show the regional sites i.e also the sites from the users country. what category it falls into?
i am a gr8 fan of ur site , keep it up.
thx
May 11th, 2007 at 8:54 pm
Hi Matt!
We have been cookieless since our first day and started just now to talk about it. The current privacy conversations, including your blog entry joining it (once again), prompted us to join the conversation as well.
Thanks for the note on Topclick. We stand corrected: hakia.com is the only search engine-currently online- that does not place a cookie and the first one to do so due to a technology shift i.e. we do not benefit from cookies as we do not need link analysis to improve relevancy.
Many thanks!
May 11th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Dear pop,
Thanks for the note!
We don’t serve search results with ip tracking at this time. The internationalization strategy will drive that decision – to have one box for all countries or to provide hakia search at local sites.
Happy searching at hakia.com!
May 13th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
Thx melek
but currently ** i am having search results relevant to my ip country , what would u say about that please?
also would it be an issue according to your policy?
thanks
May 15th, 2007 at 10:59 am
Dear pop,
Why don’t you drop me an email to continue the conversation? I would love to learn more about your search experience and where you are located and more. You can reach me at beta at hakia dot com.
Cheers,
Melek
May 16th, 2007 at 10:29 am
Howdy — I just discovered Hakia, via a friend’s recommendation of this article in Investor’s Business Daily. My first impression, after a dozen “test drive” searches, is that Hakia is *excellent* for basic searches. Responses seem thorough and relevant. Haven’t yet figured out how to do site specific searches (a feature I need often) but for most of the thousands of searches I do daily Hakia seems likely to be superior to Google — and it’s good to be able to click with conscience, which is getting harder and harder at Google.
Please consider your backs gently patted.
May 20th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
well thx
i will mail u but busy ri8 now , my pleasure.
thx