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What I Use Instead of Google

kiramclean.com

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Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#131

Post by kmclean »

whoknew1122 wrote: post #128

Interesting to see what others use. I'm a bit curious about using CloudFlare's DNS though. If you take a stand against Google's societal impact, why switch to CloudFlare? CloudFlare's 'content neutral' stance enables a lot of hate speech and other, more disgusting material. It seems odd to have ethical concerns about Google, but not CloudFlare.

I haven't done as much research about CloudFlare. I generally appreciate their views on privacy and the internet, but I have heard some really sketchy things about the way they route traffic and what you're describing sounds worrisome for sure!

I find it extremely hard to be an ethical consumer these days and honestly just get burnt out learning about all the horrible things people and companies with lots of money get away with, so I need to pace myself and take it in manageable doses. I will spend some time learning about Cloudflare this year.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#132

Post by glial »

whoknew1122 wrote: post #128

Interesting to see what others use. I'm a bit curious about using CloudFlare's DNS though. If you take a stand against Google's societal impact, why switch to CloudFlare? CloudFlare's 'content neutral' stance enables a lot of hate speech and other, more disgusting material. It seems odd to have ethical concerns about Google, but not CloudFlare.

I am against censorship but also don’t support companies who actively promote hate speech via recommendations. I’m ok with anyone having a blog but not OK with FB/Google creating conspiracy theory rabbit holes to drive engagement. This is a distinction I wish more people made.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#133

Post by oauea »

hairofadog wrote: post #123
oauea wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where? I went to https://www.apple.com/maps/ and clicked "Open Maps" but that just brings me straight back to that same page with no map in sight, just a lot of pictures of idevices.

“DDG” in the parent comment refers to DuckDuckGo, for example https://duckduckgo.com/?q=New+York%2C+United+States&t=iphone...

Yes I know what DuckDuckGo is. The comment also said:

> Apple Maps is available on the web

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#134

Post by blisterpeanuts »

When it comes to technology, people prefer one-stop shopping. Google's email, mapping, mobile OS, search, calendars, video, photos are all free and best-of-class or at least good enough to be satisfactory to 80% of the people, who think they're getting a bargain even as they put more and more of their personal information in Google's hands.

It seems as though there's no way to break this voluntary-monopoly. Waze came along with brilliant innovations like BLE devices monitoring traffic in underpasses etc. (my company makes some of the devices they use) and finding best alternative routes, and an innovative UX, so Google simply bought them, problem solved.

There's a whole menagerie of alternatives to Youtube, but they're like ants next to an elephant. And of course, Youtube itself was bought by Google; they've advanced it technically, but it was better in the old days, less censorship and better remuneration for creators.

Like a lot of other techies, I've switched to DDG for searches and I don't really miss Google search. Probably I use !g about once or twice a month.

It seems to me there's lots of opportunities to improve on Google's offerings; Apple seems uninterested in competing head-to-head aside from its mobile phone OS, but there are still innovations out there waiting to be discovered. Perhaps some here will be among those future billionaires, giving us better alternatives to The Goog which in my opinion has gotten a little too big for its britches.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#135

Post by yuribro »

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).

If apple would have done that (for Maps and other services), how would it be different than Google?

Google offers these services for free to the end-user and generates revenue from ads.

Apple is using these services to sell more hardware devices, and generates revenue from there.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#137

Post by duffyjp »

idiocrat wrote: post #16
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Google will no longer surface anything that isn't on a major site I like this search engine very much. It has all the "alternative" stuff. https://wiby.me/

Wow, it's amazing how fast a website can be without 2MB of silly Javascript frameworks. I did a search for "Weather" and got a result for my local weather in ASCII form. This is right up my alley.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#138

Post by FabHK »

Good recommendations. To minimize Youtube tracking, I use the fantastic `youtube-dl` to get the movie (or only audio) locally, then keep it or discard it as the case may be.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#139

Post by budafish »

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…

As others have said Google Photos backup via RClone has some caveats, mainly not downloading at original quality. Google Takeout does solve this but but in weird hierarchies.

I stumbled on a new project which simulates a browser download using a headless Chrome Developer tools session[0]. Looks interesting, supports continuation and can be ran on a cron job. Worth a look.

[0] https://github.com/perkeep/gphotos-cdp

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#140

Post by FabHK »

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.

DDG can be localised to a country in a drop-down menu on the left above the results.
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