I did an interview with Google around 20 years ago, where they posed a challenge involving tracking which specific search results people click. It's obvious in hindsight the solution required rewriting all the urls to redirect through their servers. Note this was in the days before they already did so as a matter of course.
I failed to gain traction on the problem, because to me the very idea of doing such a thing was too reprehensible to seriously consider. It broke an unwritten contract between the company and the user's expectation of how websites worked. You expect to be able to do things like right-click a link and copy the authentic URL, or hover to see where it wants to take you. The notion of obfuscating the link beyond easy recognition and polluting it with tracking markers felt misleading and, well, evil. A move that would mainly only benefit Google, and not it's users. I (quite mistakenly) presumed this opinion would be obvious and self-evident to anyone who spent enough time around the early web to understand its norms.
I explored other ways of achieving the goal, but it clearly wasn't the answer the interviewer sought.
I'm more seasoned now, and experienced enough to say with confidence the approach was wrong. This may seem like a small thing, but a series of misteps and chronic failure to adequately advocate for users is what has led us to the toxic waste dump that so much of the Internet has become today.
I'm really glad to have fresh alternatives (like Kagi), and can't wait for the cultural zeitgeist among developers to swing back around to valuing users as human beings and living up to the trust they place in us.
I failed to gain traction on the problem, because to me the very idea of doing such a thing was too reprehensible to seriously consider. It broke an unwritten contract between the company and the user's expectation of how websites worked. You expect to be able to do things like right-click a link and copy the authentic URL, or hover to see where it wants to take you. The notion of obfuscating the link beyond easy recognition and polluting it with tracking markers felt misleading and, well, evil. A move that would mainly only benefit Google, and not it's users. I (quite mistakenly) presumed this opinion would be obvious and self-evident to anyone who spent enough time around the early web to understand its norms.
I explored other ways of achieving the goal, but it clearly wasn't the answer the interviewer sought.
I'm more seasoned now, and experienced enough to say with confidence the approach was wrong. This may seem like a small thing, but a series of misteps and chronic failure to adequately advocate for users is what has led us to the toxic waste dump that so much of the Internet has become today.
I'm really glad to have fresh alternatives (like Kagi), and can't wait for the cultural zeitgeist among developers to swing back around to valuing users as human beings and living up to the trust they place in us.