March 2009: Son of cookie crawls out of the Goo. Meet the monster from doubleclick.net July 2007: Google announces plans for a two-year expiration, but . . . In the first place, Google's announcement repeats the fiction that the purpose of the cookie is to remember user preferences. In fact, the real purpose of the cookie is to plant a globally-unique ID on your hard disk for profiling purposes. You do not need a unique ID at all to get user preferences from a cookie. In fact, you don't even need a cookie to remember user preferences. The preferences could be sent in the URL along with your search terms. Anytime Google uses the word "preferences" in the same sentence as "cookie," you know they're hiding something. Secondly, Google's announcement suggests that they will either push the expiration date ahead two years whenever your browser accesses any of Google's sites that read this cookie, or they will do it when they detect that your cookie is about to expire. Apparently they will keep the same unique ID in the cookie, or at least be able to associate the old ID with any new ID that they issue. This new technique is not a two-year expiration date by any rational description. Instead, it is practically a guarantee that your cookie will expire two years after your hard disk fails and you toss it into the dumpster. Is it even possible for someone who uses the web regularly to avoid any and all Google sites for two years running? Probably not, which means that this announcement of a two-year expiration date is essentially meaningless. You still have to block Google's cookies using whatever tools are available, if you wish to protect your privacy. Google's new technique does nothing to change this, and their announcement is nothing more than a public relations stunt. Purpose revealed behind the 2038 expiration date for Google's cookie! On 2004-02-26 Larry Page told Reuters: "On the more exciting front, you can imagine your brain being augmented by Google. For example you think about something and your cell phone could whisper the answer into your ear." At the Search Engine Strategies conference on 2004-03-03, Craig Silverstein said that in the future people will have "search pets": Silverstein sees search pets as being able to find to the correct answer to these tricky interpretive questions. Will searching as we know it be completely replaced by search pets? "We'll still search for facts," he says, "but in all likelihood the facts will be contained in a brain implant." ... but ... Will these Google brain implants be opt-in, opt-out, or pay-per-thought? After we get our Google implants, and we happen to think of the word "commie" for some reason, will we automatically start google-stepping?

We used to try and trick your browser into giving us your Google cookie, assuming that you have one. One-third of those using Internet Explorer were vulnerable to our JavaScript exploit. But that got boring after a year, so now we merely send our server to Google's home page on occasion and pick up a new cookie to show you:

The CIA had to stop using a comparatively innocent log-analysis cookie that expired in 10 years, and their document search site isn't even used by many people. Google handles a billion searches per day, and their cookie expired in 2038. They don't even feel the need to defend their cookie policy; they merely laugh off anyone who inquires about it.

A cult of geeky blogging Google pundits joins in, and ridicules the notion that you'll be using the same computer in 2038. That's not the point. Google's expiration date is a barometer of its insensitivity to privacy issues. When we noticed this in year 2000 (it was the first time we had ever seen such a long-lived cookie), the idea of Google Watch was born. Google's response to other privacy issues since then tells us that we were right.

The purpose of the unique ID is to record your search terms for present or future profiling. Google says that the cookie is needed to set preferences. At the CIA, Google's cookie story would be termed a cover story, because the unique ID is completely superfluous for this function, even when the rest of the cookie is used to do this. In fact, you can set preferences without any sort of cookie at all.

Have you seen this on Google's site?


For years Google has been telling us that
the cookie is necessary if you want to set
user preferences. How can we argue with
Google? We don't have 100 computer
science PhDs on our payroll !


But we did have an old laptop that we loaned to the local zoo.
After only one year, they got back to us with a solution.

On behalf of our local zoo,
we are pleased to present...

How to set Google preferences - and still disable Google's cookie! We don't know how long this will work, or if it works for the Google country domains, but it's worth a try because it's so easy. Perform these nine steps in this order: UPDATE 2004-11-11: Fifteen months after we posted this procedure, Google sabotaged it. Here's a new hack you can use. Edit your current Google bookmark by inserting the four characters q=+& immediately after the question mark in the URL. This places a space in the search box, and leading spaces are ignored when Google searches. It also sidesteps Google's sabotage because the box is no longer empty. Note the new addition to number 6 below, which accomplishes the same thing. 1.  Enable cookies if they are turned off. 2.  Go to http://www.google.com/ 3.  Click on "Preferences" on the right side of the search box. 4.  Set your preferences and click "Save Preferences." You're back to the search box. 5.  Click on "Advanced Search" on the right side of the search box. 6.  Do not fill out anything, but just click on "Google Search."      Update: Place a single space in the main search box and click on "Google Search." 7.  Bookmark this new search page. 8.  Disable your cookies for Google. Explorer 6.0    Tools — Internet Options — Privacy — Edit (near the bottom) — type in google.com — Block — OK — OK Firefox 1.0    Tools — Options — Privacy — Stored cookies — highlight your google.com cookie — check Don't allow... box at bottom — Remove cookie — OK — OK   Opera 7.51    Tools — Cookies — highlight your google.com cookie — Delete — New — type in google.com — check Apply... — uncheck 3 Accept... — OK — Close Netscape 7.1    Tools — Cookie Manager — Manage Stored Cookies — highlight your google.com cookie — check Don't allow... box at bottom — Remove cookie — Close 9.  Test your cookie block:    Exit and reload your browser — go to www.google.com — click Preferences on the right side of the search box — Google should tell you that your cookies seem to be disabled Now when you use your new bookmark for Google searches, your preferences are passed to Google in the URL, without a cookie. And with cookies disabled, Google won't be able to associate your search terms with the unique ID number that they use in their cookie. This is so wonderful that we think Google will patch this workaround sooner rather than later. If they do, it will prove for once and for all that the real reason Google uses cookies is to track you, and not to set preferences. But you knew that already, didn't you?

You can block Google's cookie, but how sticky is your IP address?  Check it here.  If it stays the same for several days, you should know that Google can also call up a history of search terms by IP address, even without your cookie ID.  Searching Google from work, or from a broadband connection at home, could betray you.  One solution is to use Scroogle for your sensitive Google searches.



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