You Can’t Quit, I Dare You • Hacker News Board

Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You

#41

Post by greenyoda » Tue, Mar 26, 2013, 2:02 AM UTC

networked wrote: post #9

I 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 a…

Startpage and Ixquick are really the same thing:

"Startpage was released in 2009 in the United States as a new name for the Ixquick search engine. Because the name Ixquick can be somewhat difficult to remember and spell, people asked us for an easier name, and we were happy to oblige. Startpage uses Ixquick's search methodologies and privacy features, and is governed by the same privacy policies." [1]

[1] https://startpage.com/eng/company-background.html

Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You

#42

Post by TommyZ » Tue, Mar 26, 2013, 2:02 AM UTC

> You can easily use it on your Mac in Safari by changing your hosts file and in Chrome like so.

Using Chrome to help you quit google? ;)

Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You

#43

Post by Kerrick » Tue, Mar 26, 2013, 2:02 AM UTC

tolmasky wrote: post #30

nilved wrote: post #27

Why is anyone under the impression that living sans Google is difficult or unrewarding? I haven't used a single Google product in months (and I use Android.)

So you do use a Google product, one of the ones they care most about right now.

For anybody who wants to go for Android without Google, try Replicant, an Android distribution only running free (libre) software through its whole stack. http://replicant.us/about/

Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You

#44

Post by kephra » Tue, Mar 26, 2013, 2:05 AM UTC

some more points:

maps - replace them with OpenStreetMap, that could even be used offline

news - my http://w3dig.com/ aims on replacing this in the long run

play - I dont have it installed on my phone, and only use apk's I compiled myself

youtube - I host videos only my own server, but I still watch yt, if someone sends me a link

security - google blocks many one click share hosters, claiming that they are attack sites. I have this firefox/google service off since that time.

chrome - I prefer to turn of google features in FF, I wont switch to chrome, not for money or good words

analytics - a 127.0.0.1 in your /etc/hosts might help ;-)

apis - ouch they are really evil. Sites wont work, if you turn them off, but google will monitor you if you leave them on.

... the evil big brother google is much bigger then just search

Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You

#45

Post by nearmiss » Tue, Mar 26, 2013, 2:10 AM UTC

vacri wrote: post #2

Why 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…

no love for startpage.com?

Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You

#46

Post by networked » Tue, Mar 26, 2013, 2:24 AM UTC

greenyoda wrote: post #41

networked wrote: post #9

I 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 a…

Startpage and Ixquick are really the same thing: "Startpage was released in 2009 in the United States as a new name for the Ixquick search engine. Because the name Ixquick can be somewhat difficult to remember and spell, people asked us for an easier name, and we were happy to oblige. Startpage uses Ixquick's search methodologies and privacy features, and is governed by the same privacy policies." [1] [1] https://sta…

Not quite. Their information pages might not make this immediately clear but currently Ixquick aggregates the results from several sources while StartPage uses Google exclusively (hence the "Enhanced by Google" logo).

For a bit of fun try comparing the results they give you for the same query.

Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You

#47

Post by gtz57 » Tue, Mar 26, 2013, 2:25 AM UTC

analog wrote: post #10

brianwillis wrote: post #4

I 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?

Gmail isn't self-hosted or open source. He wasn't just saying both are popular. Unless you meant something else?

Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You

#48

Post by analog » Tue, Mar 26, 2013, 2:49 AM UTC

gtz57 wrote: post #47

analog wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gmail is the Wordpress of email surely?

Gmail isn't self-hosted or open source. He wasn't just saying both are popular. Unless you meant something else?

Wordpress and Gmail are both free and the market leaders. I'd bet that most people who use Wordpress don't care that it's open source, they just like the price and that it works well.

Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You

#49

Post by weixiyen » Tue, Mar 26, 2013, 2:58 AM UTC

RobAtticus wrote: post #36

weixiyen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I searched NBA Standings in Google and it gave me 5 teams in one division. How is that better?

Because you can expand that list to instantly see the rest of the NBA?

Oh my bad. I forgot to specifically look for light gray on white as indicators for interaction.

Re: You Can’t Quit, I Dare You

#50

Post by Cushman » Tue, Mar 26, 2013, 3:16 AM UTC

nilkn wrote: post #37

Cushman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only difference that I can tell is that Google puts some of the standings in a table on the search results page, which doesn't seem like a huge deal to me. It depends what you mean by a huge deal, I guess. Going from information on the next page to information on this page is a big difference; it's one less click, which is 100% less clicks . And it's not just the click, the page has to load, then you have to fi…

> It depends what you mean by a huge deal, I guess. Going from information on the next page to information on this page is a big difference; it's one less click, which is 100% less clicks. And it's not just the click, the page has to load, then you have to find the information you want, if it even exists. You could wind up talking fifteen, twenty seconds to do what Google has done instantly. That's a fair point, but…

I agree with all of that :) I actually think DDG's open approach will win out in the end over Google's monolithic big-data strategy, but they certainly have a good head start.