[Development] Avoiding ads and/or Google for doc searches (was: Changes to Freenode's IRC)

[Jason H]

On Thu, 20 May 2021 at 01:40, Kai Köhne <Kai.Koehne at qt.io[mailto:Kai.Koehne at qt.io]> wrote:
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Development <development-bounces at qt-project.org[mailto:development-bounces at qt-project.org]> On Behalf Of Jason H
> > Sent: Wednesday, 19 May 2021 17:26
> > To: giuseppe.dangelo at kdab.com[mailto:giuseppe.dangelo at kdab.com]
> > Cc: development at qt-project.org[mailto:development at qt-project.org]
> > Subject: Re: [Development] Changes to Freenode's IRC
> >
> > * Before you laugh, and say that is crazy, consider that the online Qt Docs search results now have ads: https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/search-results.html?q=camera[https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/search-results.html?q=camera] shows 4 ads for me.  And I don't know of any other toolkit who serves their documentation with ads. Take for example mozdev:
> > https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/search?q=camera[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/search?q=camera] shows 0 ads. React, 0 ads. I figure it's only a matter of time until the actual documentation pages have ads too. (There may be good reasons for ads, but it's still not a good look.)
>
> It's true that the embedded search on doc.qt.io[http://doc.qt.io] sometimes shows ads. But it's not the result of evil TQtC making heaps of money with ads. It's just a side-effect of using google for embedded search, and has been like that since years (if not decades)  ... We have actually recently started to look into it (again), see https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTWEBSITE-723[https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTWEBSITE-723] if you want to get updates.

The browser extension is cool, thank you.

And yes, I broke my own rule to not attribute to malice/greed what can be explained by stupidity/laziness. I hadn't planned to mention it but given the nature of the Freenode split over user data privacy, I figured that the eyesore concern was secondary to the ad tracking/privacy concerns, and that may be of interest to those interested in switching from Freenode.