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Why I’m Worried About Google

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Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#241

Post by ensignavenger »

mattpavelle wrote: post #88
bla2 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DuckDuckGo is mostly a skin on Bing search results. By using it, you're saying you trust Microsoft more than Google. If that's your intent, cool, but you're not really getting away from the big tech companies by doing this.

I thought they just partner with Bing for ad results - not that their search was a skin of Bing. Wikipedia supports the ad partnership but also doesn't say anything about Bing being responsible for their search results. And on the few tests I've just done searching both, I see similar but not exact results. Do you have a source for this claim?

Duck Duck Go uses search result API's from various venders, including Bing- that is mentioned in the history section of the Wikipedia article. (Originally they used Yahoo's search API, and Yahoo of course changed to using results from Bing). They also have their own web crawler.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#242

Post by coldacid »

earenndil wrote: post #214
CosmicBagel wrote: post #192

For some reason this was also a breaking point for me. I've switched to Firefox and Duck Duck Go. It's a small thing, but boy do you start to feel like a second rate citizen fast. The state of extensions on Firefox is a mess. I can get the usual privacy extensions easily enough, but things like using media keys to control videos playing in the back ground. Or how in the phone app of Firefox you need to pull up the si…

What's wrong with firefox extensions? I haven't noticed anything untoward in my time using it.

Firefox extensions _used_ to offer much more access and control of the browser, but they've since switched to a Chrome-like model that isn't near feature parity with Chrome. It was a huge step back.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#243

Post by vtange »

criddell wrote: post #184
xur17 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firefox is fine and DuckDuckGo is good enough by now. I finally made the jump to Brave and DuckDuckGo, but replacing Gmail, Google Photos, and Google Voice is going to be hard. Gmail will be the hardest since it's attached to so many of my online accounts.

To avoid this problem in the future, get your own domain. If you want to use GMail you can, you just have to create a GSuite account then edit your DNS to point your mail to Google's servers. If later, you want to move off Google, you edit your DNS MX record to point to a different host.

If you're thinking you can just use a custom domain as a login email everywhere, think again cause that comes with its own risks. A guy did this and ended up losing control of his accounts since a DNS is probably less stringent on security as well, the Googs itself. TLDR: Someone hacked him by calling the DNS for his domain name and taking over his email.

https://medium.com/@N/how-i-lost-my-50-000-twitter-username-...

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#244

Post by moogly »

amelius wrote: post #218
CosmicBagel wrote: post #192

For some reason this was also a breaking point for me. I've switched to Firefox and Duck Duck Go. It's a small thing, but boy do you start to feel like a second rate citizen fast. The state of extensions on Firefox is a mess. I can get the usual privacy extensions easily enough, but things like using media keys to control videos playing in the back ground. Or how in the phone app of Firefox you need to pull up the si…

> but boy do you start to feel like a second rate citizen fast. Isn't this mostly because you don't know yet how the same features work in FF and DDG?

Take for instance the LastPass plugin: You can't just copy the current site's user name/password* with just 4 mouse clicks like you can with Chrome's extension, you need to edit the site entry (4 clicks), click show password, select the password, Ctrl+C. If you need to do this for both your user name and password, it gets a lot worse than in Chrome (which remembers your position).

And don't get me started on the really bad font rendering. Firefox is still behind Edge and Chrome, hell, even IE (at least on Windows).

*: something you need to do more often in Firefox because the extension's autofill feature is even finicky than in the Chrome extension.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#245

Post by maxxxxx »

driverdan wrote: post #236
Spartan-S63 wrote: post #49

With all of these emerging privacy concerns, it reinforces my choice to move away from the Android and Google ecosystem insofar as I can. It reinforces my choice to embrace the Apple ecosystem. While their products aren't perfect, they do take your privacy seriously and you do pay for it. But to me, that seems like a fair trade. Additionally, they have second to none customer support, so it's going to take a company…

I will not buy a computer I do not have full root access to. Let me know when Apple gives users root on iOS devices.

Exactly. With Apple we get (maybe, who really knows? For how long until they decide to use the data they have?) more privacy but we also get a dictator who asserts control over the devices we buy.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#246

Post by enobrev »

CosmicBagel wrote: post #192

For some reason this was also a breaking point for me. I've switched to Firefox and Duck Duck Go. It's a small thing, but boy do you start to feel like a second rate citizen fast. The state of extensions on Firefox is a mess. I can get the usual privacy extensions easily enough, but things like using media keys to control videos playing in the back ground. Or how in the phone app of Firefox you need to pull up the si…

Replacing keep is annoying because there's no export and Google takeout dumps HTML files for each note, and not very good ones. That may have improved by now, but it was an issue for me about 6 months ago.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#247

Post by ensignavenger »

bla3 wrote: post #239
gpm wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardly. DuckDuckGo claims not to share my information or searches with Microsoft. I trust DuckDuckGo (not Microsoft) to keep their word. The fact that DDG sources information about the internet from Microsoft is unimportant. I'm concerned about my personal information, not large scale manipulation of search results.

Meh, if DDG takes off MS will likely either cut them off or charge, leading to DDG needing to run their own search. If they can do that is unproven, and if running a web-wide search engine with DDG's business model is profitable is unproven too. I agree it's irrelevant to users medium-term, but if you're happy with DDG you kind of have to hope they don't become too successful.

I'm pretty sure DDG is already paying them. Maybe they'll raise their rates, but DDG has other sources and has their own crawler, too, so I think they will do just fine.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#248

Post by sli »

CosmicBagel wrote: post #192

For some reason this was also a breaking point for me. I've switched to Firefox and Duck Duck Go. It's a small thing, but boy do you start to feel like a second rate citizen fast. The state of extensions on Firefox is a mess. I can get the usual privacy extensions easily enough, but things like using media keys to control videos playing in the back ground. Or how in the phone app of Firefox you need to pull up the si…

My current hangup is migrating a bunch of accounts that use my GMail for 2FA over to another email address. I really just need to enumerate only the essential ones and divest from/delete the rest.

I had the good fortune of realizing that I was less tied to Google than I thought.

> For example I'll often ping Google.com for a network test. Google.com is never down, it's always my hardware, or my ISP, never Google.

I've stopped doing this recently when, during a string of nearly-statewide Frontier outages, Google services still worked while everything else was inaccessible (actually happened multiple times over the course of a week). It felt a little bizarre watching YouTube videos fine but being unable to connect to IRC. I've started pinging Cloudflare instead.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#249

Post by clear_dg »

stephengillie wrote: post #73
bla2 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DuckDuckGo is mostly a skin on Bing search results. By using it, you're saying you trust Microsoft more than Google. If that's your intent, cool, but you're not really getting away from the big tech companies by doing this.

Where is the open source internet search platform?

Check searx https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#250

Post by xte »

CosmicBagel wrote: post #192

For some reason this was also a breaking point for me. I've switched to Firefox and Duck Duck Go. It's a small thing, but boy do you start to feel like a second rate citizen fast. The state of extensions on Firefox is a mess. I can get the usual privacy extensions easily enough, but things like using media keys to control videos playing in the back ground. Or how in the phone app of Firefox you need to pull up the si…

Me to, personally I drop GMail for a personal mail (20 euros per years, with a bunch of mailbox + unlimited aliases altogether with a personal domain. Benefit: alias to tell anyone a different mail so I know where the spam came from and I can easy drop anyone I dislike. Lightweight webmail (Roundcube) instead of monsters like actual GMail, login with user and password visible at the same time without the absurdity of Google that demand user-enter-password-enter cycle. A STANDARD IMAP so I can properly delete my mails from my local maildir without the need of moving to trash, sync back, delete from trash and sync back again.

For search IMVHO there is no point in switching between Google search and other equivalent search engine, simply because DDG, QWant etc are still company offering something from their own server. So I try to switch to YaCy (FOSS distributed search engine, a bit a java monster but not as monstrous as many Java crap we all know. I still use few time a day Google search mostly because it work far better...

On Keep I switch to Orgzly on mobile and sync my notes or to be more precise the sole parts of them I want on mobile, via org-mode+rsync. On Android sync without cloud is a pity due to limited fs access, however Termux work wall enough...

I have no need of Drive and I use personal calendar (via CardDav/Radicale) and contacts so I'm less bound.

However I'm still on Android seeing no real alternatives, SailFish was a substantial fail, Purism phone it's not there, OpenMoko, GreenPhone, ... are all old dead projects...

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