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What I Use Instead of Google

kiramclean.com

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Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#111

Post by dhimes »

Google's gotten weird. Yesterday I was doing some keyword planning and got a negative (-) cpc and cost. I looked everywhere to try to determine what that meant and didn't find anything.

They have online chat support, so I tried that. I got routed to a sales rep who called me on the phone and who, after taking all my information while basically ignoring my question, finally heard me. She didn't know the answer.

She sent me a support link which was the same one that routed me to her. I told her this and all she could say was she was sorry and she couldn't help unless I was ready to launch a campaign.

I honestly don't think she knew anything. I'm suspicious that these are indy workers getting routed prospects by Google. I don't know. The whole thing was sleazy.

Years ago when I managed to get someone on the line she stayed with me until my problem was solved. And this wasn't even a problem (or maybe it was? wouldn't be the first bug I found on their site). I was just asking a question.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#112

Post by marlowe221 »

matwood wrote: post #99
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…

As has been mentioned many times, the problem (if you want to call it that) with DDG is that it does not personally tailor results. Google is great at deciphering what I mean because it has data on me. DDG doesn't have this data, so how I search needed to be tweaked. I rarely have need for the g! anymore.

I'm genuinely curious about this and would like to use Google search less than I do now...

Would you mind sharing a few tips (or pointing me in the direction of some tips) for better DDG searches?

I love the concept and philosophy of DDG but the search results I get could definitely be better!

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#113

Post by ivanche »

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…

> The "Google can't arbitrarily take it away" is a good argument, but "I'm no longer part of their ad ecosystem, being tracked all around the internet" requires a lot more effort than just avoiding using google.com, youtube.com, gmail.com, etc. I'm not saying that the current transitions are useless, but that there's more to it.

This becomes much easier with uMatrix + uBlock Origin extensions for Firefox!

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#114

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#115

Post by t212 »

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…

Startpage is now owned by System1. It’s an Adtech company. I personally know some people who work/worked there and they do not recommend using Startpage for privacy reasons anymore.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#116

Post by lights0123 »

hairofadog wrote: post #92
reaktivo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple Maps is available on the web, DDG uses it for it's own maps

I was going to mention this too. However, to be fair to the parent commenter, Apple Maps on the web is only a recent development, it lacks a ton of the features of Google Maps on the web, and its world-wide coverage isn’t great. There’s also the fact that there’s no direct web interface for it, so if you were going to tell someone using a browser to “just use Apple Maps”, they would have to jump through some mental h…

It looks like their only price tier is "free with your Apple Developer subscription" or "contact us"—I wonder if their terms allow you to use it with e.g. Mapbox GL JS 1, which is much better than MapKit JS.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#117

Post by dusted »

skinkestek wrote: post #105
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".

There's also a huge gap between the number of proton mail users and gmail accounts, percentage-wise, it'd be interesting to see how many percent of gmail/protonmail users has problems and. I'm sure we will see the most silly examples from gmail, we have to, because they have the most users, and so the greatest chance of hitting strange edge-cases.

And with edge-case, I don't meen technical ones only, but also customer-support ones.. If you've got support for many more people, then more people are going to have a bad experience, and even more likely that someone has a rare (in percent of total experiences) terrible one.

I'm the one entirely against any cloud stuff, I just don't buy the argument that other providers are necessarily better. The bigger you are, the more interactions you do with your clients, the more likely that you will mess it up big-time for some of them.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#118

Post by tomxor »

t212 wrote: post #115
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…

Startpage is now owned by System1. It’s an Adtech company. I personally know some people who work/worked there and they do not recommend using Startpage for privacy reasons anymore.

I understand this, yet recently switched to startpage anyway due to massive captcha fatigue... Startpage will block you occasionally if you search at too high frequency, but it never gives captcha and blocks way way less than google presents captcha. Captcha has gradually rendered Google completely unusable to me due to being stuck on mobile internet or public wifi+VPN... both of which causes continuous captcha unless you allow them to track you... it's basically a ransom - let us track you or no search for you.

I like DDG, but for many things it's still not good enough.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#119

Post by robenkleene »

croissants wrote: post #107
robenkleene wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fair point. I can’t edit the comment anymore, but if I could I’d say some HN users are bias.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#120

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

vinni2 wrote: post #21

Every time I try to get out of google they (my colleagues) pull me back in. They share documents in google docs and google drive. I have no choice but to keep my google account.

You can create a "Google account" using a non-Google e-mail address. You still have access to all their services but you don't have to use them for anything other than accessing documents.
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