The End of Scroogle, The End of Your Internet Privacy

As of May 10, 2010, the interface that Scroogle Scraper had been using since 2002 to access ad-free Google searches is now gone... and Scroogle may have finally bit the dust at last.

This particular instance of Scroogle getting jammed, banned, or otherwise yanked and intercepted, has geeks worried that this time the world's giant search engine may have eliminated its simple interface that Scroogle had until now been scraping.

For those never initiated, Scroogle Scraper was one of those "best-kept secrets" for those who enjoy their internet privacy and prefer to circumvent needless search results, such as ads and SEO-pumped sites. Scroogle faithfully returned ad-free, cookie-free, search-term record-free search result pages.

Beyond the "mere" privacy concerns of long-time users, though, is a sense of loss for what they feel was just a great, all-around "search engine" (which is provided by Google itself before it loads its ad carnage). The ability to get un-juiced data after hitting the enter key has been a most useful tool for serious researchers wanting better information, faster. Geeks - and other information hounds outside the IT industry - will now have to deal with what mainstream internet users have long accepted: Endless pages of paid info and jacked-up sites. Mourners of Scroogle will now be getting used to the "Next" button to sift through all the crap.

The alternatives come up short. Available alt engines to search on are Blackle (a "green" version of Google) and at least one that professes to keep your privacy safe - Ixquick, which has a sister site called Startpage. We may as well just get used to Google because, at best, they do have some of the coolest features around. You can search not only for websites, but more specifically for Images, Video, Maps, News, Shopping, blah-blah-blah.

In the end, what remains most useful for those of us doing serious online researching with other engines may be adding quotation marks around search terms. The results will be closer to what Scroogle searches return, except we'll be seeing sponsored links on the right-hand side of the page. And getting our search terms recorded for posterity.

No offense to advertisers. No offense to Google Juice. Sometimes those things just get in the way when one is on an information mission. Otherwise, more power to ya's. The privacy issue is another story.

For more information on how to improve your searching capabilities, these links may be helpful to you:

http://www.google.com/advanced_search (Google's Advanced Search page)

http://us2.startpage.com/eng/power-search-techniques.html ("Search like a Pro" from Startpage)

If you're interested in the deeper side of the internet privacy question, read up on the following:

http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbw.cgi (Scroogle's current sign-off explaining their situation)

http://www.google-watch.org/ (What Scroogle is talking about, in neatly organized links to articles, regarding Google and your browsing concerns)

Sure, Scroogle was using technology made available from Google itself. But only Scroogle truly was capable of presenting it to internet users without any targeted ads, sponsored links, and that privacy nuisance of tracking search terms and IP addresses. No one else could do it as effectively as Scroogle. Perhaps they were the Robin Hoods of Web 2.0. Perhaps it was just a matter of principle that Scroogle got blown away for good. With such a minority of Scroogle users, though, one wonders if Google felt they were losing revenue from the geek demographic... or Google was worried (??)... perhaps... that they just didn't have everyone's "number?"