I apologize for the tone. It the start of my comment was clumsily wired and it wasn’t my intention to have it come off as argumentative. The way I read the GP comment to mine was talking about how Google’s tracking of its users’ telemetry was what was contributing to the uniqueness of requests. Your comment to me boiled down to the fact that of course most requests are unique because of tracking location data and the user account. There seemed to be a disconnect because your comment took for granted that user location and account were a part of the search query while the person you were replying to specifically challenged that notion (again in my reading of both). I tried to post a concise bridge between the two concepts, and of course we all see how well I did with that :)
Having said that, I do think this is clearly a sensitive issues, not a purely technical one. I can appreciate the nuance of working for Google and doing excellent work while seeing the company criticized left and right for its business model. I think given the community, while there is opposition to how Google may at certain points conduct itself as a corporation, there is no lack of respect for any individual working there. I certainly view my comment and the discussion of privacy as having 50% to do with Google’s strategy and 50% to do with the technical aspects of whether you can build a search engine that holds user privacy as a core priority rather than trying to launch an ad hominem on you or anyone. And I saw your other comment that agreed with me and the GP comment so I think my first sentence aside, we are on the same page :)
Having said that, I do think this is clearly a sensitive issues, not a purely technical one. I can appreciate the nuance of working for Google and doing excellent work while seeing the company criticized left and right for its business model. I think given the community, while there is opposition to how Google may at certain points conduct itself as a corporation, there is no lack of respect for any individual working there. I certainly view my comment and the discussion of privacy as having 50% to do with Google’s strategy and 50% to do with the technical aspects of whether you can build a search engine that holds user privacy as a core priority rather than trying to launch an ad hominem on you or anyone. And I saw your other comment that agreed with me and the GP comment so I think my first sentence aside, we are on the same page :)