BIBLIOTHEKE

Earlier this month, Greg Duffy posted a fascinating dissection of Google Print with details on how Google’s cookie apparently works and an algorithm for getting past the copyright restrictions. Excerpt:

Most web browsers allow small text files, called cookies, to be stored on behalf of web servers … this allows a persistent state to be associated with a user. After a cookie is created, it will be sent back to the web server every time you request a page (but only when you request a page from the server that originally requested the cookie). For example, when you set your SafeSearch preferences on the Google web site it stores your choice in the Google cookie. Then, whenever you request a page from Google it can see what you set your preference to earlier and use it without having to ask you again. If you delete your cookie, you’ll just get a new cookie the next time you visit … but you’ll have to set your preference again. Pretty useful, huh?

Google does some more interesting things with its cookie, though. Some of them are hard to figure out. The first thing to notice is that your cookie will store some preferences locally, like SafeSearch, because Google probably doesn’t care if you see that information (it won’t bother you to see that they are storing your preferences). Otherwise, they probably have a server side system that uses the following characteristics of the cookie to store more .. ahem .. personalized information about you.

in other Google Print news, slashdot notes that more and more books are showing up as OneBox insertions

This entry was posted by William J Melody @ 11:13 am and is filed under Free Culture, Library, Code. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Note that there may be a delay when posting your comment because continued comment spam has forced me to turn on partial moderation.