There are a number of alternative search engines out there and some, such as Duck Duck Go, are completely independent and actively work to protect your privacy. Then there’s Gibiru. They make a lot of grand sounding claims, and their “about” page should really be written in green ink, but I liked the idea and started using it.
The first thing that concerned me is that they seem to be using Google’s API – so you’re actually querying Google. So how is that uncensored exactly? Surely Google are quite capable of censoring their API as well as the front end the users see. I wonder how well Gibiru works in China?
What Gibiru does is to proxy your search request and zap all of the potentially identifying data so that Google doesn’t get your IP address etc. So far so useful.
But there is a major problem: the links they return are actually links to Google; every result in a Google search contains a link that looks like a link to the target site, but is actually a redirect via Google itself so that they can pick up information on where you went after searching.
Try it: go to giburu.com; search for something; right-click any of the result links; copy the link address and paste it somewhere you can look at it. It’s the same link you would get if you searched on Google, and it is also a link *to* Google; If you click the link, Google will have all the info it needs to entirely reconstruct your search – including your IP address.
Am I missing something here, or is Giburu really this flawed?
