Re: OT: Strange behavior in Firefox -- google searches start by searching another URL / domain

[rhkramer@gmail.com]

Thanks for the reply -- not quite, comments interspersed below:

On Monday, June 07, 2021 04:38:24 PM Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 07, 2021 at 04:28:03PM -0400, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:
> > time) when I go to do a google search, the little message down in the
> > lower left corner of the screen that typically gives messages like
> > (paraphrased): ~"waiting for google.com" or "loading data from
> > google.com" (with variations on the URL) sometimes starts with a
> > completely irrelevant URL (but one that I recognize and that concerns
> > me).
> 
> Let's make sure we understand each other completely here.  I believe
> what you are doing is:
> 
> 1) Open firefox.  It has a default or nearly-default configuration.
> 
> 2) Go to www.google.com.
> 
> 3) Search for something.  Doesn't matter what.

What I see is happening while the google search result page is "populating" 
(or actually waiting for it to start populating), the first thing I see 
(sometimes) is something like ~"waiting for buckslib.org"



You don't have to go any further (i.e., to your step 4, the problem I see 
occurs before that).  Aside: I am familiar with the behavior you describe 
below, the redirecting through www.google.com first.

(For now, I haven't deleted the following.)
 
> 4) Hover the mouse on one of the search results.  A URL will be shown in
>    the lower left corner.
> 
> 5) Actually click the search result.  Instead of going to the page that
>    you saw in the corner prior to clicking, you are redirected through
>    www.google.com first.
> 
> If this is what you mean, then yes, this is how Google works.  It's not
> specific to Firefox.
> 
> If you replace step 4 with "Right-click on the URL and select Copy Link
> Location, then paste the URL into a terminal", you'll see that the actual
> URL is of the form
> https://www.google.com/[stuff]&url=https%3A%2F%2F[realURL].
> 
> This is how Google knows which link you clicked on.
> 
> Ostensibly, they do this so they can "score" their search results and
> promote the ones that people click, and demote the ones they don't.
> 
> Whatever else they may use this information for... is not public knowledge,
> but we can speculate.
> 
> So, you may be asking, "Hey, if the real URL that I'm going to visit is
> www.google.com/something, why is it showing me www.debian.org in the
> corner of the page?"  Javascript.  The answer is Javascript.  It allows
> page creators to lie to end users in all kinds of ways.