Google Scholar blocks me in Safari.

There have been numerous similar complaints regarding Google Scholar and other Google products.

I have reason believe Google is increasingly objecting to Safari's intelligent tracking prevention, which (among other privacy aspects) limits its ability to identify you, harvest your personal information, and monitor your browser activity. It is concluding (wrongly) that your computer is a "bot" and you are not "you" for reasons I'll explain later.

Provided you accede to Google's privacy intrusions your options are to use a different, non-Webkit browser. In addition to Firefox consider Brave:

https://brave.com/

Brave is Chrome without the Google. It may lack Safari's superior privacy features, but no one needs Chrome.

For reference: https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention-policy/

Excerpts:

These practices are harmful to users because they infringe on a user’s privacy without giving users the ability to identify, understand, consent to, or control them.

...

Unintended Impact

There are practices on the web that we do not intend to disrupt, but which may be inadvertently affected because they rely on techniques that can also be used for tracking. We consider this to be unintended impact. These practices include:

• ...
• Bot detection.

... and

We want to see a healthy web ecosystem, with privacy by design.

That philosophy lies at the heart of everything Apple does, and is an existential threat to Google's business model. Google is frankly desperate to infest your Mac, and is resorting to increasingly desperate measures to convince you to do that. You don't have to play that game. If Safari does not meet your requirements try Brave or Firefox.

iCloud Private Relay allows many people to share one IP address, which makes it hard for companies like Google to identify and track any individual person using the shared IP address. The kicker: Google Scholar blocks me when iCloud Private Relay is on, even though I am logged in to Google Scholar. So it is not that Google wants to be able to identify me when I use their site; it’s that they want to be able to identify me after I leave their site and visit other companies’ sites.

As soon as I disable iCloud Private Relay, Google Scholar begins working again.

If I turn iCloud Private Relay back on after Google Scholar begins working, Google Scholar continues working for a while. (So perhaps Google was able to glean so much from my device after I turned off iCloud Private Relay that Google can now distinguish me despite my using a shared IP address again. Or perhaps turning on iCloud Private Relay does not immediately mask current browsing sessions mid-session. Perhaps both possibilities are true.)

Of course, disabling iCloud Private Relay de-anonymizes my web traffic. So I cannot endorse that anyone turn off iCloud Private Relay. I am simply explaining part of the mechanism.

tokeriis wrote:

I have the same problem. I found that if you disable website tracking (top option) in the Safari privacy settings, Google Scholar will work again.

This is very unfortunate.

Typical of Google to force you to give them your data so they can sell it to advertisers. It’s why so many experienced users here stopped using any Google products years ago. You can live online very well without Google sucking your data from you.

I have the same problem. I found that if you disable website tracking (top option) in the Safari privacy settings, Google Scholar will work again.

This is very unfortunate.