This websites uses Google for fonts, static content and analytics https://imgur.com/a/BUDxbWY Don't trust them
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Google Alternatives
151–160 of 247 posts
Re: Google Alternatives
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
is location history really turned off or do they keep profiling you but just dont show you? there is no way to know since its all closed source
It really is turned off. Companies like Google get huge fines when they break their promise -- even accidentally.
LOL no. Try using Google Maps logged out on an Android phone for more than a week. Google will find a way to reconnect you to the default Google account on the device.
An even better test:
- get an Android device (say, a OnePlus 6T)
- create some contacts on the phone, and add a few events in the default calendar
- open the Play Store (required to get many of the most popular apps)
- you're required to logged into a Google account
- log in and try to not have your contacts and calendar events uploaded to Google's servers.
That is not possible, because
1. you must be connected to the Internet in order to log into a Google account (obvious)
2. Google does not let you enable or disable the sync for a particular item before starting uploading everything
3. Google will enable the sync for all possible items (starting w/ contacts) in the background, and you cannot switch screens fast enough to prevent that.
This must have been the default for most Android devices for a decade now. They keep collecting billions contacts details without users' explicit consent, which is 100% illegal.
Re: Google Alternatives
#153I'm actually confused if this site was created ironically.
* "Google search is malicious, send the same data to Russia with Yandex instead."
* Apparently Google Chrome is a search engine.
* "Google doesn’t care about users’ privacy that much. It collects your data and uses it for their own purposes." Might just be me, but this reads like a throwaway essay written by an 8th grader.
* The site uses Google Analytics.
Despite the clear lack of quality in this article, it seems like this type of post does well on HN simply because "Google == bad" is such low-hanging fruit.
Re: Google Alternatives
#154I tend to imagine that year-2005 Google search is a tutorial-level web app today. Was Google search 15 years ago really bad by today's standards?
With my biases, I remember that Google search was pretty good by 2005 (and much more predictable and configurable than nowadays). Why is there almost no competition and innovation in this space, apart from rebranding Bing search as Duck Duck Go?
Re: Google Alternatives
#155Wish there was more info on the difference between these services. I really admire DDG but I don't think they check their ads well. I have been taken in by a scam ad once before. For email, I've been using fastmail ever since I asked this[1] two years ago. It is terrific. It also provides a calendar. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18054574
How do you like the calendar? Google Calendar is the one thing I’ve really found to be way ahead of the competition.
Re: Google Alternatives
#156Wish there was more info on the difference between these services. I really admire DDG but I don't think they check their ads well. I have been taken in by a scam ad once before. For email, I've been using fastmail ever since I asked this[1] two years ago. It is terrific. It also provides a calendar. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18054574
Same here, I just renewed for 3 years for 92$.
There are only two things I hope they will fix:
- the android app works only when there is an internet connection running (...)
- they should provide a family account, because I am not gonna pay for my wife or kids' accounts for 10 emails a month or so.
Re: Google Alternatives
#157Regarding Google Drive:
I am still using it, because I think that Google services are generally highly secure (in terms of theft/hacks/breaches/etc), although they might not be the safest in terms of encryption.
However, I am using it with Cryptomator[0]. What this tool does it to encrypt your data/files/etc and store them in the chosen cloud. It's quite convenient, if you have several devices. I highly recommend it.
If you want to use Cryptomator, please check if your cloud storage provider supports WebDAV, otherwise not every feature will work, like android or so.
You can also use this idea with something like KeepassXC so that you can have a password manager in the cloud without having to pay.
Re: Google Alternatives
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've fully switched to DDG. I still bounce over to google maybe 5-10% of the time, but to me that's a pretty big win. 90-95% of the time I avoid being tracked by google at the cost of 5-10% of the time wasting a few seconds skimming results on ddg before jumping to google.
You can make a more specific query instead.
Actually, this in anecdotal, but i believe most of the cases where ddg lets me down are when the query is VERY specific. More general searches seem to have no diff between google and ddg results.
Re: Google Alternatives
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
I got better results once i set the location to the country I live in
This thing used to work until maybe half a year ago. Before, I was getting proper localized results. Even searching in Japan with English keywords gave me Japanese results. Nowadays when I search even for simple things it does not work. If I look for "dominos pizza" in Japan, I get: dominos.com allmenuprice.com dominosaruba.com dominospanama.com dominos.ca dominos.com.au dominos.co.in dominos.co.nz ... And it goes on…
Location and local results are separate settings so that you can have global results without changing location. In case of pizza you will probably want to narrow down your search to city instead of country. Pretty sure it's impossible to break japanese search, when I search for ドミノ ピザ dominos.jp is the first result.
Re: Google Alternatives
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here is an interesting one: search for 'reddit conspiracy' on DDG and Google. DDG: /r/conspiracy at the top of the list - first result Google: nowhere to be seen Makes me wonder what else they are not showing.
Maybe it's just a joke by Google? Showing a reddit conspiracy ( no results for /r/conspiracy ) if somebody searchs for 'reddit conspiracy'.
That would be funny, but there are other examples like that. Pick any community towards the "right" and you will probably get the same result. i.e. search 'reddit dark enlightenment'
Again first result on DDG, no result on Google.