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DuckDuckGo Extension to Block FLoC, Google’s New Tracking Method in Chrome

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21–30 of 259 posts

Re: DuckDuckGo Extension to Block FLoC, Google’s New Tracking Method in Chrome

#21
I started displaying a banner on my website [1] a while back for visitors using Chrome/Chromium telling them to "give Firefox a try for the future of the open web".

I don't know how many people came across that or clicked the link, as I don't track that, but I enjoy doing my tiny part in letting people know.

[1]: https://www.gkbrk.com

Re: DuckDuckGo Extension to Block FLoC, Google’s New Tracking Method in Chrome

#22
post #9

No thank you. I appreciate what DDG is trying to do but in the end, a search engine that makes money from selling ads trying to protect me from another search engine that also sells ads is just feeding the ecosystem. I am going to put my money into FF no matter how annoying some of the things in it are.

Is there another search engine you recommend instead?

https://www.mojeek.com/

Re: DuckDuckGo Extension to Block FLoC, Google’s New Tracking Method in Chrome

#24
post #18
post #5

Even without privacy considerations though, duckduckgo seems to give me better results, I've been using it as my default search engine for years

I moved over to duckduckgo too, but what I've found is that when I'm searching for some esoteric bug Google is way more likely to give me a decent result, to the point that I'll literally switch back to google for those types of issues.

I think what we need is a search engine which doesn't draw it's revenue stream from selling users data and has it's own spider. DDG essentially is a wrapper around Bing.

Re: DuckDuckGo Extension to Block FLoC, Google’s New Tracking Method in Chrome

#25
post #8
post #5

Even without privacy considerations though, duckduckgo seems to give me better results, I've been using it as my default search engine for years

Are you based in the US? I found them really bad for localized results outside of the US, even when local mode is enabled (although that's annoying to do manually). In the end I used !g for so many search queries that I switched back again.

I agree, for localised results Google is much better. I guess it depends what your normal search activity is to how much you'll notice the difference? For everyday searching I find DDG perfectly adequate and enjoy the ad-free, google-product-free experience. !G is handy sometimes though.

Re: DuckDuckGo Extension to Block FLoC, Google’s New Tracking Method in Chrome

#26

No thank you. I appreciate what DDG is trying to do but in the end, a search engine that makes money from selling ads trying to protect me from another search engine that also sells ads is just feeding the ecosystem. I am going to put my money into FF no matter how annoying some of the things in it are.

There are varying degrees of selling ads though. DDG and Google both sit at opposing ends of this spectrum.

Re: DuckDuckGo Extension to Block FLoC, Google’s New Tracking Method in Chrome

#28

I’m OK with ads and I’m even OK with personalised ads. I’m not OK with companies correlating my browsing with my real world identity or giving that data to governments. Has anyone figured out some clever cryptography to enable personalised ads without the privacy concerns?

Isn't FloC exactly that? All the data stays on your device and it only gives an identifier of a pretty big group of people to the websites?

Re: DuckDuckGo Extension to Block FLoC, Google’s New Tracking Method in Chrome

#30

No thank you. I appreciate what DDG is trying to do but in the end, a search engine that makes money from selling ads trying to protect me from another search engine that also sells ads is just feeding the ecosystem. I am going to put my money into FF no matter how annoying some of the things in it are.

Really? I can appreciate not wanting to use DDG for a number of reasons, but because they are pushing for financial legitimacy on the basis that there can be an ad industry but it shouldn't be an arms race? Yes thank you, please make a market out of privacy! edit: I should probably say, please prove that privacy respecting markets are viable, I'm not suggesting the commoditisation of everything, lol.

I use DDG as my main search engine but I share the parent's concerns. In the end an ad-driven business model will always pit the interests of its users vs the interests of the advertisers.

Should DDG become ultra-successful, how long until they start making concessions to privacy to increase revenue and growth? After all not so long ago Google themselves were "the good guys" and we were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Turns out that "Do No Evil" only really works until it starts clashing with "Make More Money".

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