Back on May 16, 2014, I wrote about Google registering the domain name CookieChoices.org. Well, now I have discovered today that it looks like there is a version of Google’s search engine on CookieChoices.org.
Currently, several of the links (like the links to the “sign in” doesn’t work), but most of the Google search engine is there. There are links to Gmail, images, and soforth.
If you currently go to www.cookiechoices.org, it doesn’t respond–but it only works if you literally go to http://cookiechoices.org without the www in the URL. From what I can tell, this is a “stripped down” version of Google, and Google’s logo doesn’t appear on the site’s home page.
But, I can verify that the site is hosted on Google’s IP address 216.239.32.29 and on Google’s name servers. You can also get to this version of Google if you directly to the IP address http://216.239.32.29/ in your browser.
What I find really interesting is that the search queries currently don’t appear to be blocked, as the referrers are looking like this. This appears to be a version of Google that is not using secure https.
So, if this cookiechoices.org website / version of Google still exists in the future, and they don’t take it down, will you use it?