Google firefox plugins for the ten fingered beings

Some people call me reactionary, but I don't believe in accepting progress just for the sake of it and I must say, the almighty oracle's layout and way of working used to work better for me a couple of years ago. I finally got annoyed enough by it, that i searched out a couple of plugins. I should add that i use pentadactyl, which may cause peculiar semantics, but is too good to give up.

• The most important one is google link fixer if you just want the real URLs. I see why google wants to track, what you clicked on, but not being able to copy the link is really freaking me out.
• Also useful in this context may be the google url shortener, since most of the time i just want to copy it into irc where the goo.gl short url is even more helpful in anyway.
• I found bread crumb navigation to really help with the URL not fully showing on the google result page. If you are also using pentadactyl you should combine this with the less chrome add on, since you likely don't have a navigation bar. Please note that in this case you need to reenable the bar and let less chrome hide it!
• I find google customizer quite helpful, but at least at the moment you need to fudge the compatibility and disable updates for it to install and work after the first restart.This also provides a way to disable the link foo google does, if you are willing to put up with an unsupported plugin, that is partially broken or outdated, but otherwise has lots of useful features.
• To enable mac'ish (among others of course) "Don't close window on closing last tab"(d), use
  :set! browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab=false
• In order to get back the old cache functionality without the bar use gcache+, it seems to be the most convenient plugin for this purpose albeit still annoying.

Google and Bettina Wulff

For anyone not into German politics, let me retell the story, it's not really important since there are cases like this one in many countries. The issue is simple, our former second lady was rumoured to have worked at an escort service years ago. The claim seems to be completely made up but that's what rumours are all about. Be as it may it spread around the internet and Google's autocomplete suggested it to anyone searching for her after some time. She was and is quite peeved about it and sued Google, the result of that lawsuit is yet to be determined.

Now the quintessence of the problem is, whether Google is required to censor it's results (and the suggestions are results in a way). It has done so in the past, ordered by court or law (e.g. Italy/France/Egypt or even DCMA), semivolontarily (e.g. China a few years ago or recently RS/torrents in the suggestions) or completely volontarily (e.g. the recent anti muslim video scandal).

Let's state a few facts that i have a feeling are not obvious to everyone.

• It is technically possible, but only to a degree. I've heard before, that it is and that it isn't and both extremes are pretty much nonsense. I'm not going to discuss how searching works on the inside but you could always put a filter on the end results, there is no denying that. It wouldn't be costly either, compared to the processing, the data experiences already and the fact that it has happened in the past prove this. Still it would be completely out of the question to do try and filter everything that might be offensive. It would be close to impossible to come up with a list that fits everywhere, human intervention is too costly and last but not least, what's acceptable and what isn't is just not canonical (think different countries, cultures, religion).
• It's not a new problem. I don't even understand why my favourite newspaper made that claim in the first place, it's just way too far out there. There are so many precedences for every aspect of the story and I'm not just talking about the internet here. For the specific case of Mrs Wulff just think of all the garbage the yellow press rumours every day. It's just a sad fact of being in the spotlight.
• This is not about free speech. Although i can't argue with active undertakings to hide certain results being "censorship" of some kind, so is not pushing certain others. Every little tweak Google would make to their search algorithm would have similar albeit indirect effects. Also at least from a German point view, it is ok to prevent certain things to be said. The German constitution deliberately weighs off freedom of speech vs demagoguery vs slander preventing you saying things considered incitement of the people or insultations. This is difficult, since there are fine invisible lines, that are not obvious or the same to everyone but in practice it works and is reasonable.
• This is not a completely naturally occuring phenomenon. Yes, the automatic suggestions are solely generated by the amount of users that search for a specific phrase, but (big but) a lot of them only search for those because they were suggested to try them (i wouldn't come up with half that junk, that i have searched for, just because the suggestions were so outlandish).

Is it then justified to force google to censor its results? I'd say yes, it can be, though the case at hand had to be rather severe. I don't think it was a bad idea of them to remove the anti-islam hate video despite the response in the islamic world being ridiculously over the top. I doubt even half the people rioting has even seen this load of tripe.
Is it Ok to force google to remove autosuggestions? I'd say yes, but the case at hand would have to be even clearer than for mere search results. It is definitely desirable to censor, (child) pornography from there for example. Mrs Wulff on the other hand has no right to demand this. The tabloids would have to be outlawed long before that.
The only compromise i could imagine would be to make a list of the results/suggestions not shown alongside their frequency accessible somewhere. This wouldn't solve the problem of technical feasability though.