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De-Googleify Internet

degooglisons-internet.org

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Re: De-Googleify Internet

#11

Post by LeoPanthera »

ebbv wrote: post #6
nvk wrote: post #3

Just talking about search alternative; DuckDuckGo is my default search engine for over 2 years. It's incredibly good, the only caveat is you need to re-learn how to search. The same way you "changed yourself" initially for google.

Isn't DuckDuckGo Bing behind the scenes, though? That doesn't seem that much better to me. It would be nice to have a truly independent, startup search engine but it's a really big task for a fresh company to tackle.

The major advantage DDG has is that it doesn't matter what it is behind the scenes. They can change whenever it suits them and the site will continue to act as an anonymizing front-end, complete with some useful extras.

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#12

Post by mi100hael »

I like the idea of this project, but I have several nits/concerns:

- De-Google-ify is a poor way of marketing these ideas. Your average web user loves Google because they are trendy and make everything so convenient.

- The site enumerates the pitfalls of cloud-hosted solutions and then proceeds to link to their own cloud-hosted solutions with no explanation of why they're any safer, better, etc.

And not limited to this page, but I really wish in general there was a better way to convey the point of free software than the word "free." If every single person immediately misunderstands what you mean, you've already lost.

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#13

Post by daveloyall »

Their alternative services appear to mostly be existing FOSS projects, re-branded...

Normally that would trouble me, but in this context... maybe a great idea! The uninitiated might have less trouble adopting "the frama suite" vs a dozen separate apps...

Granted, the GNU ecosystem should already provide that, but of course there are lots of good FOSS apps that don't and won't fly the GNU banner...

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#14

Post by JoshTriplett »

nvk wrote: post #3

Just talking about search alternative; DuckDuckGo is my default search engine for over 2 years. It's incredibly good, the only caveat is you need to re-learn how to search. The same way you "changed yourself" initially for google.

I didn't feel that I had to adapt "how to search" at all; I just had to get used to how the results looked. It took me a while to realize how much I'd associated "good search results" with the visual style of Google search results. I ended up temporarily switching to a DDG theme that mimicked the Google search result style, and I realized that doing that alone made the search results seem better.

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#16

Post by jamestanderson »

ebbv wrote: post #6
nvk wrote: post #3

Just talking about search alternative; DuckDuckGo is my default search engine for over 2 years. It's incredibly good, the only caveat is you need to re-learn how to search. The same way you "changed yourself" initially for google.

Isn't DuckDuckGo Bing behind the scenes, though? That doesn't seem that much better to me. It would be nice to have a truly independent, startup search engine but it's a really big task for a fresh company to tackle.

They get their results from 400+ sources [1] [2]. Bing does happen to be one of them, though.

[1] https://duck.co/help/results/sources

[2] https://duck.co/ia

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#17

Post by kazagistar »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #9

Why? To completely remove anything from your life that happens to have Google as a part of it would be so inconvenient. Gmail is objectively an amazing email app on both desktop browser and mobile. No search engine can come close to Google. Lots of great apps like Google Docs, Calendar, and Translate exist to make your life easier for free. Google Maps is kinda annoying with Uber ads but its navigation and UI is so n…

This article is not specifically about google, only the title is...

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#18

Post by stuckagain »

nvk wrote: post #3

Just talking about search alternative; DuckDuckGo is my default search engine for over 2 years. It's incredibly good, the only caveat is you need to re-learn how to search. The same way you "changed yourself" initially for google.

It defies my experience to claim that DDG can have equivalent search quality to Google. For one thing Google search results include my own emails and docs, which DDG doesn't produce. I find that Google's personalization is key to quality, not counter to it. As an example search for "good espresso open now". The DDG results are entirely useless.

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#19

Post by techsupporter »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #9

Why? To completely remove anything from your life that happens to have Google as a part of it would be so inconvenient. Gmail is objectively an amazing email app on both desktop browser and mobile. No search engine can come close to Google. Lots of great apps like Google Docs, Calendar, and Translate exist to make your life easier for free. Google Maps is kinda annoying with Uber ads but its navigation and UI is so n…

> To completely remove anything from your life that happens to have Google as a part of it would be so inconvenient.

How so? I don't use any Google services (even search) and don't feel the least bit inconvenienced. Microsoft's suite has those same things (Excel, Word, and OneNote are all available through a web page if that's your thing), translations are widely available (Bing and Dictionary.com), alternative maps (I like Here Maps, it even lets me download entire countries or regions for offline use), and so on. I must be the only person on the planet who doesn't like Gmail, so I'll just leave that one alone.

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#20

Post by bobajeff »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #11
ebbv wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't DuckDuckGo Bing behind the scenes, though? That doesn't seem that much better to me. It would be nice to have a truly independent, startup search engine but it's a really big task for a fresh company to tackle.

The major advantage DDG has is that it doesn't matter what it is behind the scenes. They can change whenever it suits them and the site will continue to act as an anonymizing front-end, complete with some useful extras.

So what you're saying is that instead of Bing they could be using Yandex, Baidu or Google?
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