What I Use Instead of Google • Hacker News Board

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#101

Post by kmclean » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 1:48 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #9

powersnail wrote: post #3

> I suspect means it [DDG] would be a perfectly fine replacement for most people I suspect otherwise. DDG is as good as Google in certain topics, especially programming-related topics. But otherwise, not so good. Sometimes, it feels like it simply has indexed less pages than Google. But I still use DDG as much as possible, only !g when the results are unsatisfactory. I don't know how much it actually help DDG, though…

My experience is that DDG still isn't as good as Google historically was, but Google itself has actually gotten worse, to the point that they're now about the same. The main problem seems to be that Google will no longer surface anything that isn't on a major site, so even when you know that the thing you're looking for exists, it can't find it. Obviously this also implies that it's missing a ton of stuff you didn't…

Yeah I agree.. DDG has limitations, but I find the first 2 pages of Google are almost entirely ads now (either literal paid ads or posts full of ads and affiliate links). The whole SEO racket has incentivized all the wrong kinds of optimization.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#102

Post by kmclean » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 1:50 PM UTC

cosmotic wrote: post #28

If you have to use Chrome for selenium; use a docker container https://hub.docker.com/r/selenium/standalone-chrome

That's a good idea! I hadn't thought about using docker.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#103

Post by darkfirefly » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 1:52 PM UTC

dmytton wrote: post #26

Moving large numbers of files - like the 50k of Google Photos the author mentions - can be done using https://rclone.org . Set up Google Photos as a source and then use the copy command to move it to a different location[1]. There are a lot of different commands which work with many different cloud storage systems e.g. sync everything one way locally to a backup, mount a FUSE filesystem, do two-way sync, etc. [1] htt…

If you want to save Google Photos, use Google Takeout to download it. It allowed you to download all of your google-related-data, including photos.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#104

Post by s5ma6n » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 1:55 PM UTC

paulcarroty wrote: post #78

logicchains wrote: post #72

I try to use Bing for all my searches (set it as the browser default), but at least a third of the time I end up needing to open Google and search there instead. Anyone got any tips for getting better results out of Bing? It doesn't help that when I'm using a VPN, searching for an English term often causes Bing to deliver a bunch of results in the native language of the place the VPN is located, rather than in Englis…

Makes sense to try duckduckgo or startpage? My Bing using experience was extremely bad for all non-tech, maybe except sport.

I have the same bad experience with DDG and it is so slow. I found Bing relatively better and it is constantly improving with new features.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#105

Post by skinkestek » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 2:07 PM UTC

dusted wrote: post #62

I'm all for getting out of the cloud, but moving from one company, to multiple other companies seems to have achieved nothing but diversify and multiply the amount of terms you've had to agree to (they will all tell you the same thing in the end: if they block your account, or lose your data, it's your problem). The only real solution is self-hosting[1], which is becoming a bit difficult with email these days. [1] No…

> they will all tell you the same thing in the end: if they block your account, or lose your data, it's your problem

Still there's a huge gap between "might do that according to the contract" and "does so on a regular basis and is well known to have no official way to appeal".

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#106

Post by ajdude » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 2:09 PM UTC

dusted wrote: post #62

I'm all for getting out of the cloud, but moving from one company, to multiple other companies seems to have achieved nothing but diversify and multiply the amount of terms you've had to agree to (they will all tell you the same thing in the end: if they block your account, or lose your data, it's your problem). The only real solution is self-hosting[1], which is becoming a bit difficult with email these days. [1] No…

This is ultimately what I ended up doing, with one caveat: I have mailinabox running on a VPS in a local datacenter.

If my ISP wasn’t so aggressive with sending mail, I would’ve just self hosted on my own computer.

However, mailinabox also comes with nextcloud, and it works out of the box with exchange activesync, allowing me to basically mimic gmail’s syncing of calendar/contacts/etc. I made the switch about a year ago, it took registering two domains (one for the actual mail server and one for .com) and paying for the VPS, plus all the overhead of initial configuration, but it has been smooth sailing since. My email is happily firstname@lastname.com to the public and private@mailserver.tld for private stuff- it even supports the firstne+string@lastname.com.

At the end of the day, this is probably the best someone can reasonably do. Then it’s just ddg and Apple Maps.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#107

Post by croissants » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 2:12 PM UTC

robenkleene wrote: post #67

systemvoltage wrote: post #30

Google is such an insane value. $5 you get GSuite, auth, drive, chat, meet, and a bunch of things. Folks that are privacy concious are equally deluded. It's marketing and you're falling for it. ProtonMail doesn't have stellar record for privacy (or any Swiss company in general). There has been several discussions about this on HN, and otherwise where many have compared email services and rated their privacy claims. F…

This comment should not be this highly rated on Hacker News. The entire content of this comment is: I read a bunch of stuff somewhere that said all these alternative companies are bad. There are no links to sources, there's no evidence presented, there's nothing to dispute. There's no substance to this comment. Hacker News has a bias towards Google because Google offers a bunch of services for free that are useful to…

> Hacker News has a bias towards Google

There are multiple threads every single week that get hundreds of upvotes for criticizing Google. I think Hacker News is heterogeneous enough on this that "bias towards Google" is an overstatement.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#108

Post by skinkestek » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 2:12 PM UTC

s5ma6n wrote: post #104

paulcarroty wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense to try duckduckgo or startpage? My Bing using experience was extremely bad for all non-tech, maybe except sport.

I have the same bad experience with DDG and it is so slow. I found Bing relatively better and it is constantly improving with new features.

Maybe 2021 will be the year when I give Bing a real chance?

(I was simultaneously deeply impressed and worried last year when a colleague of mine showed that Bing also returns results from company intranets if they are set up correctly and you are signed in to Bing with your work account.)

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#109

Post by Dirlewanger » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 2:12 PM UTC

nurusr12211 wrote: post #13

I prefer using the best technology over endless virtue signaling.

Ok, Google.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#110

Post by seszett » Wed, Jan 06, 2021, 2:16 PM UTC

rayrag wrote: post #88

wtmt wrote: post #52

> Maps → Apple maps If Apple were a different company, it would've made maps available for use on web browsers and non-Apple devices. That could also help in a more rapid improvement of maps as opposed to the mostly-useless state it's been in (except for a few countries and regions in certain countries that Apple likes and works more on). > and still a little YouTube (anonymously in a Firefox container) If a Firefox…

> If Apple were a different company, it would've made maps available for use on web browsers and non-Apple devices. That could also help in a more rapid improvement of maps as opposed to the mostly-useless state it's been in (except for a few countries and regions in certain countries that Apple likes and works more on). Try https://satellites.pro/plan/world_map# - you can switch between Apple Maps, OSM, Mapbox, Goog…

I wonder how they do that, that doesn't look like a use case that Apple is OK with.

But anyway, I didn't realise how bad Apple Maps was. It's miles away from OSM and even from Google Maps, at least in the places I looked up in France (so not like in remote areas of Mali or the Amazon forest).