Google with new JavaScript-requiring design
May 26th, 2007 by anonymous
The popular search engine Google, who appear to be working closely with the CIA, has changed it’s english startpage. The new page uses JavaScript to print out the new menu in the upper left corner, which means that it does not appear if you are using a non-JS browser or you’ve turned JS support off.
The new startpage looks like this when JavaScript is enabled:
And like this when JS is disabled:
As you may see in the above screenshots, the JS menu is not there if the browser has JavaScript disabled.
JavaScript allows websites to gather huge amounts of information about visitors, JS can tell what screen resolution you are using, color depth, window size, what browser extentions are installed and the exact version of those extentions, etc. There are many ways to identify a computer by using JS. Anonymity-software like Tor will not protect your privacy if information is leaked over the anonymous connection. Thus; Tor-users - and non-Tor users who value their privacy - should only enable JS when absolutely needed.
It’s not the end of the world that Google appears to have adapted a policy which requires their users to browse with JS enabled, but it is a bad trend. What if they suddenly decide to require JS to view search results in their search-engine - like a few search-engines already do?
If someone is using the paranoid settings that the server versions of MS Windows enables for IE, then those search engines are a PITA that make you do that. You have to either blanket enable the whole site, turn off the paranoid setting, or use another browser. Besides, JS tends to crash IE a lot more often then not. Heh.