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Leaving Google has actively improved my life

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Re: Leaving Google has actively improved my life

#111

Post by dheera »

nomel wrote: post #15
Aurornis wrote: post #7

> After giving them a fair shot, I think I can now honestly say that Brave and DuckDuckGo are better than Google for >90% of searches I've had DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine for years and I couldn't disagree with this more. DuckDuckGo is fine for quickly getting to well known sites where I can't remember the URL, but it's objectively worse for trying to find everything from Reddit threads to Recipes. Their de…

> from Reddit threads Google is the only search engine allowed to index Reddit [1]. [1] https://www.lifewire.com/google-reddit-deal-8685766

I'm sure Baidu could safely index Reddit if they wanted to.

Re: Leaving Google has actively improved my life

#112

Post by toast0 »

expensive_news wrote: post #80
bartread wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same experience with DuckDuckGo. I've probably been using it as my primary search engine for, well, I'm not absolutely sure, but I want to say it was sometime during the pandemic so that must be, what, 5 years? Honestly, it's got to the point where 8 or 9 times out of 10 I switch to Google search because I'm unhappy with the results I'm getting... and really it's at the point where, why am I even still using it? It's…

Do you find the results are better when you use the same query on Google? Because I’ve also exclusively used DuckDuckGo for the past 5 or so years, and every now and then I get frustrated by the results try Google. But only once did Google actually give me what I was looking for. Every other time the Google results were the same SEO garbage I was getting with DDG. Maybe I should try switching to Google for a full mon…

What I found was that when I first started using DDG, using !g to take me to Google would get good results. But over time, it stopped working. I'm not totally sure if it's because Google's profile on me timed out and it's not getting enough searches or because Google search quality has gone down. Now, several years into using DDG as primary, when I can't find it at DDG, I expect I won't find it at Google either... but they do give me different bad results.

Re: Leaving Google has actively improved my life

#113

Post by yacthing »

amelius wrote: post #106
WarmWash wrote: post #37

The problem isn't Google. The problem is that people want a "free internet" without ads, and without any form of data harvesting. But they also don't want to pay any money, because the internet, as we all know, "is free". In 30 years, no one has figured this out. So I feel pretty confident in stating that it's either gonna be ads or payments. And if we switch to a payment model, then the internet becomes another syst…

The internet is not free. Somebody is paying for those ads. And this somebody is us, collectively. And you know what? We are paying more than if we would pay for these services directly, because advertising companies are taking a cut. And on top of that we are paying with our data.

This is about as useful of an argument as when people say taxpayer funded services aren't free.

Those who are wealthier pay more into the tax system, allow those who are less well off to gain access to things they normally wouldn't. This is a good thing.

Likewise, those who are wealthier are buying more products that are advertised, allowing those who are less well off to gain access to the internet for closer-to-free. This is also a good thing.

We can put limits on how advertising is done, give control over your data, etc etc. But the fundamentals stay the same.

So no: paying your way towards internet products won't save the average person money.

Re: Leaving Google has actively improved my life

#114

Post by hoppyhoppy2 »

elliotec wrote: post #83
nomel wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> from Reddit threads Google is the only search engine allowed to index Reddit [1]. [1] https://www.lifewire.com/google-reddit-deal-8685766

Kagi has tons of results from Reddit and they're always high and relevant. I don't know if this means they're doing it even though they're "not allowed to" or what but they definitely get it somehow.

Kagi's search results (at least used to) include many Google search results mixed in with results from other sources. That used to be explained on Kagi's main webpage, but I don't see it there now. (And I don't know who pays whom for what in that type of arrangement.)

Re: Leaving Google has actively improved my life

#115

Post by alex1138 »

thayne wrote: post #66
nomel wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> from Reddit threads Google is the only search engine allowed to index Reddit [1]. [1] https://www.lifewire.com/google-reddit-deal-8685766

That sounds like some excellent fodder for an anti-trust suit if you ask me.

It does. Reddit has defined what truth is. Banning r/nonewnormal is merely one part of that

Re: Leaving Google has actively improved my life

#116

Post by reddalo »

stephantul wrote: post #84

Ecosia is not just Bing, we offer a bunch of indexes, including bing and Google. We’re moving to our own index, which we are building in collaboration with Qwant, under the name European Search Perspective. I do see the point of the article however.

I love Qwant and I think it works better than DuckDuckGo.

I can't wait for the European index.

Re: Leaving Google has actively improved my life

#117

Post by yardstick »

WarmWash wrote: post #37

The problem isn't Google. The problem is that people want a "free internet" without ads, and without any form of data harvesting. But they also don't want to pay any money, because the internet, as we all know, "is free". In 30 years, no one has figured this out. So I feel pretty confident in stating that it's either gonna be ads or payments. And if we switch to a payment model, then the internet becomes another syst…

I agree.

20-something years ago, when I paid for my internet connection, I also got an email address (or 5…) and some personal web space (5MB maybe?) and access to their NTP servers as part of that. No ads.

Of course if I left the ISP I would lose access to it, as I stopped paying for it. I’ve long since left the ISP, and they’ve dropped all these value adds.

Presumably because people wanted cheaper plans and jumped to other providers which did internet access and nothing else.

There are people willing to pay a reasonable amount for fair services. I pay for various Google and Apple services, including for email. Those that don’t, have ads based plans.

Re: Leaving Google has actively improved my life

#119

Post by sollewitt »

bengale wrote: post #98
layer8 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Critical services like email and search should be treated as a public utility. Those cost money as well, but are affordable to almost anyone, and social safety nets should be taking care of those who don’t.

Government email, sounds great. Sign me up.

Government physical mail is pretty great, you just need the right regulations.

Re: Leaving Google has actively improved my life

#120

Post by andrewk17 »

I spent the effort to de-google a several years back and switched to Proton. After years of being on Proton, I recently switched back to GMail.

It didn't really make my life any better. And at this point, I think I see more value in having AI be able to piece together information to serve me up useful information than trying to protect my privacy within email (I couldn't get off Google Photos, it's just too useful).

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