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by olejorgenb8 hours ago |
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upvoteby evanjrowley7 hours ago|
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>It's funny to me that (to my knowledge) no browser (mainstream?) implement this functionality yet. Seems like a no brainer to index what the user have actually seen...

The answer to this is complicated.

Both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge actually implement this. Behind the scenes, both will upload your browser history to the cloud. You can see it in network packet captures. It's implemented in the browser for the vendor, but not for the user.

The choice to not implement this for the user is very deliberate. It's contrary to the vendor's interests if the browser provides this capability directly to users. If a user's browser can take you to a website directly, then you are not using the vendor's search engine, meaning you are not looking at their ads, paid search results, algorithm, etc. It would severly impact their business model.

This is also the reason why browsers have:

- Adopted Google Chrome's "Omnibar" instead of a separate address bar and search bar.

- Implement only basic hierarchical organization for browser Favorites.

Directly and indirectly, Google is the central nexus of all modern browsers. Aside from Google Chrome, they also:

- Fund the vast majority of Firefox.

- Pay Apple for preferential treatment.

- Provide the same mechanisms to vendors who base their browsers on Chromium (i.e., Microsoft Edge, Brave).

I would love for this to not be the case. There is hope to be found in small independent browser and search companies/projects.

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upvoteby everlier4 hours ago|
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Never thought about this, but it makes sense they don't want a better local search, just for users to rely more on their product. It's messed up - so much time and human potential wasted on poor search and ads.
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upvoteby skycrafter06 hours ago|
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> Adopted Google Chrome's "Omnibar" instead of a separate address bar and search bar.

On the other hand, the additional tools in the Omnibar (calculator is the example most should be familiar with) makes the bar incredibly useful for random daily tasks. Also, it seems that there is an "omnibox" API that extensions can use, which allows them to add their own tools to the omnibar/omnibox. Would be interesting as a form of "assistant" in a way.

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upvoteby windowliker6 hours ago|
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>Both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge actually implement this. [...] both will upload your browser history to the cloud.

I'm fairly certain I've caught Firefox doing something similar (regularly sending multiple tens of MB to Google servers in the background.)

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upvoteby ComputerGuru5 hours ago|
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So fwiw, browsing history shouldn’t be anywhere near that big making it unlikely there what it was. It compresses well, if they were to do it I’m sure they’d do it at regular intervals instead of a years’ worth at a time, etc.

And, of course, Firefox is open source and this wouldn’t be kept a secret.

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upvoteby windowliker3 hours ago|
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In which case I'd love to know what it was doing sending that much data to Google IPs when I don't use Google services...

I've read all the Mozilla help pages about what automatic connections Firefox makes and it wasn't accounted for there (unless possibly something to do with SafeBrowsing.)

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upvoteby olejorgenb6 hours ago|
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> Both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge actually implement this. Behind the scenes, both will upload your browser history to the cloud. You can see it in network packet captures. It's implemented in the browser for the vendor, but not for the user.

Citation needed... (I'm talking about the page *content*, not the metadata like url and title)

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upvoteby nubg6 hours ago|
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> both will upload your browser history to the cloud

I wonder if the EU could fine them a couple weeks of revenue for this. Seems illegal.

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upvoteby olejorgenb6 hours ago|
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I'm 80%+ sure the claim is BS
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upvoteby evanjrowley5 hours ago|
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It's not BS for the people who don't understand the dark patters that guide users to enabling all of this stuff. That's everyone with a Windows PC who didn't bypass the Microsoft account requirement and went with all of the defaults in Microsoft Edge. Everyone using Chrome Enterprise/Education whose Google Workspace admins don't want to get into trouble for not backing up people's stuff (i.e., sharing it all with Google). Same goes for company Windows PCs set up with Microsoft Entra ID. It's everyone with an Android device and a Google account who wants their settings backed up or transfers to a new Android device. It's in the fine print and legalese for all of these products and services.
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upvoteby paradox46012 minutes ago|
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There's an old Mac app that tried to do it. History hound. It sometimes worked
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upvoteby flexagoon7 hours ago|
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There are things like Mymind (SaaS) or Karakeep (selfhosted) that do this, though they require you to explicitly save the pages instead of indexing everything by default
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upvoteby twiclo6 hours ago|
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I haven't used this but looks someone created a self hosted version of Microsoft's Recall

https://github.com/openrecall/openrecall

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upvoteby evanjrowley7 hours ago|
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I would really like to see integration between Karakeep and SearXNG so that I could combine online search engine results with my self-hosted bookmarks serice.
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upvoteby vel0city7 hours ago|
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If only some operating system incorporated a way to make everything you've seen on your computer locally searchable, wouldn't that be a neat feature?
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upvoteby olejorgenb6 hours ago|
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I believe there some projects trying this now using OCR IIRC.

Did even Microsoft try something like this? It's of course something you'd only want running locally

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upvoteby gjm116 hours ago|
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I think the joke is that Microsoft did do something very like this -- they call it Windows Recall -- and it got a lot of angry pushback. (Partly, IIRC, because the specific way they did it initially was very bad in terms of security and privacy, but I think a lot of people quite understandably don't trust them to implement it (a) the way they claim they do or (b) competently, so even after they made a bunch of changes aimed at making it less scary it's still viewed with a lot of hostility.)
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upvoteby olejorgenb4 hours ago|
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Ah :wooosh:, :D
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upvoteby mock-possum6 hours ago|
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> no brainer to index what the user have actually seen... I know there's a a number of third party programs which does though

Which company would you trust with this kind of deep surveillance information on you though?

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upvoteby olejorgenb4 hours ago|
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I would trust Firefox if they made a version which did the indexing locally. I think I'd trust chrome as well as long as it was implemented locally.
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upvoteby hirako20007 hours ago|
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That's called search: in history.
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upvoteby hoppyhoppy27 hours ago|
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That doesn't search the content of the pages you've browsed, though, right?
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upvoteby hirako20007 hours ago|
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Right, I misunderstood the case.

I guess because it isn't then trivial for a web browser to do, indexing every text ever rendered?

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upvoteby packetlost7 hours ago|
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I think you would need to take it a step further and do full-text search on loaded pages. It's certainly possible but probably pretty data intensive.
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upvoteby catlover768 hours ago|
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[dead]
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