"Some Search results may require additional settings, like Web & App Activity or Location History".
Reading more about Web & Web app activity explains it as follows:
"If Web & App Activity is turned on, your searches and activity from other Google services are saved in your Google Account, so you may get more personalized experiences, like faster searches and more helpful app and content recommendations."[1]
[1]: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/54068?hl=en
Edit: reworded from personalized results to personal results
It's now at a stage where if you don't want to be tracked, you should just stop using the Internet.
I, like you, have turned everything off. I use Startpage for search, but on Youtube, I find I still get personalized recommendations if and only if I accidentally log out. If I'm logged in, I get a depersonalized Youtube page.
(Yes this is problematic and I'm not suggesting anything, just explaining.)
I'm just surprised because it really does work for me. But, I make a point of never voting/subscribing/commenting/queuing/etc. And the difference between when I'm logged out and logged in is very stark.
In addition to curating what I want to see with upvotes/subscriptions, I also use the "Not interested" and "Don't recommend channel" buttons heavily. For some reason YouTube always recommends those stupid "meditation music" videos, even though I have never watched one and I always block those channels. Honestly, YouTube's recommendation engine is shite; even when I tell them exactly what I like, it still recommends absolute tripe, and most of what I discover comes from external (personal) recommendations.
If it starts recommending the same videos to me I press the Not Interestes button.
I also use a VPN 95% of the time, only turning it off for Netflix occasionally.
The most annoying thing is that reCAPTCHA stop working: more website administrator should consider migrating to hCaptcha.
Point of the story is saying they already won in getting all your data is really what let’s them win.
If you use a VPN, which are getting more common, and stay away from using too many Google/Facebook products you’ll do pretty well.
GP was concerned about:
> filtered/tailored results based on my IP location and my interests
IP location is typically computed server side, based on the originating IP of requests. Your interests are recorded server side, based on what requests were made.
"Tracking" in JavaScript is a big problem, and disabling JS does help prevent third party tools from knowing about you, but the discussion here is about first-party tracking: tracking being by Google, whose site you're using.
Bah, I'm getting cranky tonight. I'll log off. Good luck with the privacy fight. I mean that genuinely; I don't think anyone really cares, beyond posting a few comments on message boards. Duckduckgo is a nice alternative, but how many programmers actually use it to find answers to programming questions? And even if a few do, I really don't get what the privacy crap is all about here.
Google added a feature that we can use to do neutral searches. That's awesome, and they deserve praise for it. But nooooo, the privacy is the ultimate altar.
At least one. I’ve been using DDG exclusively for two or three years now. If I’m really stuck, I go straight to StackOverflow.
Nonetheless, the thrust of it is something I feel at my core; "Google did a good thing" here, but "you won't acknowledge any good thing." Personally, I find that lame, especially with privacy arguments that seem very much like strawmen.
And yes, I agree good things should be acknowledged regardless of where they are coming from. I think people are generally just jaded with Google because they want something that Google will never be able to offer (that is, to be respectful of their privacy), so they lash out automatically out of frustration.
It mostly works well enough.
Since I use Vimium, when it doesn't, redoing the search on Google is just a few keystrokes:
gi<Control-a>!g Enter
That's 'gi' for 'focus text input', Control-a for beginning of line, add the DDG "google this" shortcut, press return.
It's in my spinal cord, and I don't need it that often anyway.
og<space> my-search<enter>
'o' for open and 'g<space>' to select Google as search engine.