You Can’t Quit, I Dare You
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You Can’t Quit, I Dare You
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Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You
#2Why is Bing seen as the only other game in town? If you're really about not letting 'the man' in on your stuff, why would you go to the other 'the man' of Microsoft?
I don't use them, but my privacy-conscious friends use duckduckgo for this exact reason, and it has a wealth of rich search available.
Also, something in me philosophically opposes a mail company that charges 50% more for IMAP access. IMAP should be encouraged for the masses, not shunted into a 'you-only-want-it-if-you-know-it' space. IMAP solves most of the problems I hear from normal users that isn't password-related.
Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You
#3[deleted]
Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You
#4I like to run my email on my server, but it’s a significant undertaking and I don’t recommend you do that.
I agree with Ben on this point, but don't really understand why things are this way. In looking for a replacement for Google Reader I found a bunch of high quality self hosted options. Similarly, hosting a website on your own server (or one you rent from someone else) is a pretty trivial exercise for anyone that reads Hacker News.
So why is email so damn hard? Where is the Wordpress of email?
Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You
#5> It’s not an easy thing to do, mostly because old habits die hard, but it is actually very possible.
That's a different premise than most people are using.
I wouldn't quit Google services because its possible. I would quit Google services if it was personally worth it.
And it simply isn't. Not for me and not for the overwhelming majority of internet users.
Oddly, he confuses why it might be worth it too. He says at the beginning that it is "mostly because old habits die hard", but ends with "people are willing to give up their privacy before handing over cash". Neither of these address the utility of being in the Google ecosystem, especially if you own several Android devices.
I think its good to talk about the practicalities of leaving Google, but I don't think this article does a very thorough job. It just takes jabs and offers a few poor alternatives.
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The author mentions he uses iCloud instead of Gmail, but doesn't actually say why there would be any material difference between the two. I know that alternatives to Gmail exist, but I need to know why I'd want to change my email address for more than a lark.
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The author claims DuckDuckGo is "fantastic", but gives zero reasons why except for different search results. I just tried it again, and got nothing useful for "showtimes near me", "movies near me", "NBA standings", "Cafes in Nashua", and a few recipes (for recipes Google shows reviews, total time and calories in-line). Try "flights from SFO" in each. Wow. Prices to popular destinations in-line in Google.
What different search results, make DuckDuckGo fantastic? Does anyone have any examples?
Here we are at long last in the age of the Semantic Web, 12 years after Berners-Lee declared it a thing (and 7 years since he lamented that his vision had gone unrealized). The combination of web semantics and very powerful inferences have made Google (and Bing) search into wonderful powerhouses of utility with so much information above the fold and even before the click! DuckDuckGo has nothing in this space.
One of the best tests for search engines in my opinion is what it does it poor or incomplete search terms. Often I don't know how to spell something, or someone has related something to me with incomplete information. What if someone told me to look up a cat breed called the "egyptian maw". DuckDuckGo returns nothing at all useful, Google correctly figures out that my friend spelled the breed wrong, its really "egyptian mau".
Interestingly, trying DuckDuckGo with capital letters ("Egyptian Maw", or merely capitalizing Egyptian) produces completely different results, in this case more correct ones. That certainly fits the "DuckDuckGo is different" mold, but in a way that's horrifying.
Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You
#6Why is Bing seen as the only other game in town? If you're really about not letting 'the man' in on your stuff, why would you go to the other 'the man' of Microsoft? I don't use them, but my privacy-conscious friends use duckduckgo for this exact reason, and it has a wealth of rich search available. Also, something in me philosophically opposes a mail company that charges 50% more for IMAP access. IMAP should be enco…
I was thinking that about Bing too, when I first read it. Then the Bing thing turns into "and that's a worst-case, we also have DDG, which kicks butt!"
Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You
#7I've been attempting this to some extent. I use startpage.com for search, google results without the tracking. Firefox for chrome, and pay $1.50 a month for a personal domain email account.
My gmail account is only used for my Android device at this point.
Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You
#8Hmmmm, I suspect that Google, just like Facebook, creates "shadow profiles" on non-members, ie profiles on unique non-member users across a very large part of the internet (G: any site using google analytics, a +1 button, etc; FB: any site with FB like button) As such, escape from Google or FB is near-impossible.
You might say: sure, but at least they will not know my identity!
Try again. Most US ISPs sell click-stream data. Several services that offer those "interesting articles elsewhere on the web" that you see on various news outlets, have in their terms that ANY registration submitted on those sites is passed on to them as well by their "publishing partners". Combine IP addresses and date/timestamps, and very detailed user profiles, including personally identifiable information, can and are compiled.
The only way to escape the clutches of G/FB is to disconnect from the web.
PS I'm fully aware of the very large number of additional tools/options one can employ to remain more anonymous (FB disconnect, VPNs, Ghostery etc etc) but remember: just one "essential" service that you cannot live without and requires a real name (mobile phone, landline, credit card, etc.) is all that is needed to "close the loop".
Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You
#9I regularly search for fairly obscure stuff in several languages, so when I decided to quit Google Search trying to use alternatives like DuckDuckGo [1], Ixquick [2] or Bing [3] didn't quite work out for me. The best solution I found was to use StartPage [4], which works like a proxy for Google. Based on over a year of experience I can highly recommend it. I rarely have to resort to using Google Search directly and at times I prefer the non-personalized results that StartPage gives me. Still not sure if I like their domain-squattery name, though.
Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You
#10I like to run my email on my server, but it’s a significant undertaking and I don’t recommend you do that. I agree with Ben on this point, but don't really understand why things are this way. In looking for a replacement for Google Reader I found a bunch of high quality self hosted options. Similarly, hosting a website on your own server (or one you rent from someone else) is a pretty trivial exercise for anyone that…
Gmail is the Wordpress of email surely?