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Google Alternatives

justprivacy.org

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Re: Google Alternatives

#101

Post by asdf-asdf-asdf »

it's unfortunate that the webpage is so misleading. for example, about email, it says:

" Google and its partners have access to all your information and they can collect data, they can display ads inside your inbox, and the contents of your inbox are shared with random third parties. "

the proof they link to is an article about cases where the gmail-user gave permission to those third-party apps to read their gmail-email. so, no "random third parties", no "partners". if you remove those parts from the argument, what remains is an email provider that also displays ads next to your email.

Re: Google Alternatives

#102

Post by [deleted] »

cryptbe wrote: post #97

If you want to keep using Google services, here are some Google Alternatives Alternatives: 1/ Google Search, YouTube, Maps: visit https://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols to turn on auto-deletion or turn off search history, location history or YouTube watch history. This page also allows you to turn off ads personalization. There are many security and privacy controls on https://myaccount.google.com/ , turn the…

[deleted]

Re: Google Alternatives

#103

Post by prox »

rlv-dan wrote: post #59
garyrichardson wrote: post #8

I've tried really hard to not use google for search. But DDG is bad. I have it set as my default search. I find myself either: 1) trying duck duck go and then immediately re-searching in google to actually get relevant answers. 2) skipping the search bar and going immediately to google when I know DDG just isn't going to work. Feels like back in the olden days when you had to try Altavista, Lycos and Yahoo to find wh…

After using DDG for years, I sometimes try Google when DDG does not seem to deliver. Every time I am disgusted by the sheer amount of crap it shows me. Videos, shopping, news etc. I'll take DDGs clean result list over that any time! (And usually, Google has the same results as DDG anyway)

Another DDG user here, people forget sometimes that you need to search a bit differently with DDG, a bit more explicit as it were with your keywords.

That said, in general DDG results seems to be improving incrementally, while I can’t say the same for Google.

Re: Google Alternatives

#104

Post by Kiro »

prox wrote: post #100
ikt wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of "over 400" sources,[8] including Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wolfram Alpha, Bing, Yandex, its own web crawler (the DuckDuckBot) and others.[3][8][9][10] It also uses data from crowdsourced sites, including Wikipedia, to populate knowledge panel boxes to the right of the results.[10][11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo

Why is a direct quote being downvoted?

The Wikipedia article makes it sound like their search results are from "over 400" sources and their own bot. That's just for the widgets and Instant Answers.

Their own Sources page makes this distinction more clear:

"To do that, DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from multiple partners, though most commonly from Bing (and none from Google)."

https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...

Re: Google Alternatives

#105

Post by DenverCode »

rlv-dan wrote: post #59
garyrichardson wrote: post #8

I've tried really hard to not use google for search. But DDG is bad. I have it set as my default search. I find myself either: 1) trying duck duck go and then immediately re-searching in google to actually get relevant answers. 2) skipping the search bar and going immediately to google when I know DDG just isn't going to work. Feels like back in the olden days when you had to try Altavista, Lycos and Yahoo to find wh…

After using DDG for years, I sometimes try Google when DDG does not seem to deliver. Every time I am disgusted by the sheer amount of crap it shows me. Videos, shopping, news etc. I'll take DDGs clean result list over that any time! (And usually, Google has the same results as DDG anyway)

I've been very pleased with https://www.runnaroo.com.

Re: Google Alternatives

#106

Post by ethanpil »

bg24 wrote: post #90

I was addicted to Google News. Until I realized that the news only shows to me what it wants to show. I do not see apnews, Reuters, and lots and lots of sites that I want to. I can customize google news, then it becomes a curator. So I have started deliberately moving away from news, and using the individual sites.

I have recently discovered allsides.com and have been enjoying it for news.

Re: Google Alternatives

#107

Post by bigyikes »

tored wrote: post #28
dqv wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an unfortunate paradox of a new search engine: the results suck because no one searches and no one searches because the results suck. I try to continue to work at it until I get a result I’m looking for in the hopes that it helps improve the search results for myself and others. I can say that the ddg results today are good enough that I can actually use it as my default, but this was not true several years a…

Not only has DDG become better, especially for regional/localized searches, Google has become worse. What Google has done is to prioritize mainstream sources over correct matches. In the old days you could get a match for small unknown blog on the first page, today it is very rare for me that I get that. It is usually mainstream sources on the first page, except when the search is very technical like programming. Thi…

> One thing that Google do better is grouping result from same source

This seems trivial compared to the search problem. I wonder if something like this is on DDG’s roadmap.

Re: Google Alternatives

#108

Post by bigyikes »

tored wrote: post #28
dqv wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an unfortunate paradox of a new search engine: the results suck because no one searches and no one searches because the results suck. I try to continue to work at it until I get a result I’m looking for in the hopes that it helps improve the search results for myself and others. I can say that the ddg results today are good enough that I can actually use it as my default, but this was not true several years a…

Not only has DDG become better, especially for regional/localized searches, Google has become worse. What Google has done is to prioritize mainstream sources over correct matches. In the old days you could get a match for small unknown blog on the first page, today it is very rare for me that I get that. It is usually mainstream sources on the first page, except when the search is very technical like programming. Thi…

> One thing that Google do better is grouping result from same source

This seems trivial compared to solving the search problem. I wonder if something like this is on DDG’s roadmap.

Re: Google Alternatives

#109

Post by piyush_soni »

edgyquant wrote: post #75
uniqueid wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried the comparison within the last year? You will probably find that while DDG Search is still just as bad as you remember, Google Search is no longer much better. I use Bing quite a bit, too, which is even closer in quality to Google Search.

My problem with bing, and I could be wrong for it, is I’m not looking to replace one data mining company with another. I’d much rather give a smaller, up and coming, company my searches.

That an endless cycle. You give your time and money to a 'smaller' company (thinking they're not as evil), but soon they become big corporations and start doing the same kind of things. :)

Re: Google Alternatives

#110

Post by cryptbe »

blazeWayne wrote: post #43
newusr10121 wrote: post #37

I'll consider Google alternatives when there is a better alternative. Until then I use the best technology. Do we really need these same posts every other week?

> I'll consider Google alternatives when there is a better alternative. Sure, you do you, nothing wrong with that. I'd rather use 'inferior' technology if that means better privacy standards.

Google provides decent security/privacy controls, see my comment on how to turn them on [1].

If you have any specific concerns, I'd love to learn more and see if there's anything I can help.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25383289

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