Google is both a "Search Engine" and an advertising supplier to other sites. As a Search Engine, it is uparalleled. It loads up fast, searches well and fast, and labels "sponsored" results clearly. Some search engines do the same thing but don't let you know the result was bought and paid for.

Sponsored Links

Sponsored Links are a form of advertising, where the "sponsor" pays Google to have their results listed first. It happens all the time. When you search for something, say "duplicate bridge", you may find at the top of the list an entry shaded in pink(?) and labeled "Sponsored Link." When I did this today, there was a Sponsored Link named "TheBridgeDoctor", a web-site. They paid Google a small fee to be at the top of the list. In addition, they agreed to pay Google a small fee every time somebody clicks on that result, and gets sent to their web-site.

Google, and all other search engines, also tells the web-site, when it forwards you there, that it was responsible for that "referral." You should be aware of this, since the site may offer you a "special" that may or may not be so special -- its a mild form of invasion of privacy. When I'm offered a price on the web, I also try to access the site some other way to see if the price remains the same. I'm suspicious and paranoid about these things. It seems companies these days are always trying to gouge you, rather than provide the best product or service at the best price.

Unsponsored Links

Unsponsored links are more reliable, but not completely so. The order Google returns results in is not random. They are listed in the order of their "popularity" on the web. There is software out there that attempts to fool Google and inflate the popularity of a site, to get higher on the list instead of paying the Sponsored Link fee. But usually you can recognize commercial sites that are just out for your business, rather than answering your question, by reading the text excerpted by Google from the site.

Look at the listing's URL (the link). Usually you can trust sites ending in ".gov" (Government site), ".edu" (Educational institution), and .org(an Organization). Try looking up "Tylonol", spelled wrong. Google will ask you if you meant "Tylenol", spelled correctly, but give you links to sites which spelled it wrong or both ways. Personally, I don't trust a site that doesn't spell my search item correctly -- how smart can they be? If they spell it both ways, they may have done it deliberately, assuming I can't spell -- I don't like them either!

Magic Sites

There's one more disturbing thing about searches that troubles me. I don't know how they do it, but some sites are able to claim to have what I'm looking for, but they really don't. Somehow, it appears that they find out what I was searching for, and fool Google into reporting that they have it. I've learned to recognize these right away when I get to the site, but its pretty annoying.

Google Advertising

As an advertising "provider", I'm not so sure. This is where they make their money, I'll bet. Here, an advertiser puts their commercials on one of Google's computers, and pays Google handsomely, I'm sure. Behind the scenes, other web-sites do not pay Google, to allow ads to show on their site, but Google pays them when an ad is clicked on. Google also charges the advertiser for providing the ad to the other site, and for each time the ad provided is clicked.

With me so far? Now it gets interesting. The other web-sites cooperate with Google in discovering what their users click on and do on the site. Lo and behold, if you have shown interest in race-cars on one site, have shown you have money on another site, shown you are a man on another site, and live in California on another site, you will be shown ads for race-cars [race-car lover + has money + man + Californian = $$$$$] on a totally different site. Cool? Or diabolical?

This is so powerful, advertisers believe, that Google is making billions of dollars doing this. Surely, it must be true that presenting the race-car ad to you is much more effective than presenting it to a knitter in Maine. Other companies do similar things, but Google seems to be doing it the best. (Some companies track like that, but sell the data directly to advertisers for use in magazines and other non-web outlets.)

Cookies

This is where "cookies" come in. A cookie is a file, stored on your computer by every web site you visit. That's how they do some of that advertising stuff. Normally, a site cannot tell that you are the same person as "flamethrower" on some other site. With a type of cookie called a "third party" cookie, however, they can tell its the same computer. A third-party cookie records the sites visited and the computer's serial number, and makes that cookie available to third parties. Databases can "put this all together", with the help of one or more of the web-sites, and get a very good guess who you are.

I recommend you disable "third party" cookies. You never know what else they could be used for. Ads aren't so bad, they pay for many useful free sites. But are they used for spam, porn, pedophilia, scams, snake-oil? Those are completely different.

Regular cookies (first party) are only available to the one site that saved it. These are quite valuable to you and you should not disable them. Some sites will not operate properly without first-party cookies, so you may want to leave them enabled. The Daily-Recap does use first party cookies, but will operate if you disable them. We will never use third-party cookie. But after you disable third party cookies, watch out for a site that says "we cannot provide access because cookies are disabled," or some such phrase. THESE ARE THE ONES DOING THE COOPERATING to use your web-visits, your computer space, your expensive "download speed" to their advantage, not yours. And they don't even bother to ask. To hell with them -- you didn't want to visit their site anyway. I also blame Microsoft for cooperating with this process, because the "default" setting allows third-party cookies. You have to manually turn them off.

Disabling Third Party Cookies

If you want to know how to disable third party cookies, I suggest you look it up on Google!! Hint: enter "disable third party cookies" and see what you get. {easycomments}