Comment by jcl
6 years ago
FWIW, it looks like that's a test case -- it is not part of Chrome itself. They most likely just wanted an example of a third-party website, and could have used any non-Google site there.
6 years ago
FWIW, it looks like that's a test case -- it is not part of Chrome itself. They most likely just wanted an example of a third-party website, and could have used any non-Google site there.
Yes, But they tested Yahoo of all websites to make sure they don't send tracking data, and not an unrelated website like wikipedia or archive.org. The only non-google test case too I might add.
It's a test case I wouldn't read too much into it. Maybe it's evidence of a massive anti-trust conspiracy at google, but it could very well be because it's the first domain that came to the programmer's mind at the time.
I wasn't aware of this, but it still seems like a thread worth pulling on. You're assuming, right? The reason I ask is that using any third-party company seems inappropriate. Even more so when Google has plenty of domains of its own to test against. Even more so when it is against a media/advertising company. And again, even more so against a company that changed from Google to Bing to power their search function. It seems to be an inappropriate or poor choice, doesn't it?
There's no smoking gun here, but I don't think that concern might be dismissed out of hand. It might be good to see what Yahoo's take on this. This could even evolve into participation by the US Attorney General. I'd like to know more, either way. Like if Yahoo was independently added to the list at a later date, or if it was there from the start?
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I've long seen it almost as a tradition to use yahoo for things like testing if the internet is working, e.g. "ping yahoo.com". I suspect this isn't much more than that.
It's an arbitrary test string, not evidence of evil intent. A sufficiently uncharitable interpretation can make anyone's writing look evil. It's not so.