Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Alternatives

justprivacy.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 247 posts

Re: Google Alternatives

#141

Post by Cyberthal »

Google first, since it's personalized. Then check dogpile.com for anything Google might suppress due to its obvious political bias. Works great for me.

In general, punish a monopoly by using a competitor, not by boycotting the monopoly. You're supporting an eventual threat to the monopoly, which monopolists hate, because it erodes their long-term advantage. That's why they spend so much buying up small competitors. They're afraid.

Doing yourself the injury of avoiding the monopoly platform completely is something they would do to punish you if they could, to discourage others from patronizing competitors.

Re: Google Alternatives

#142

Post by dorgo »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #85
garyrichardson wrote: post #8

I've tried really hard to not use google for search. But DDG is bad. I have it set as my default search. I find myself either: 1) trying duck duck go and then immediately re-searching in google to actually get relevant answers. 2) skipping the search bar and going immediately to google when I know DDG just isn't going to work. Feels like back in the olden days when you had to try Altavista, Lycos and Yahoo to find wh…

We've done this song and dance 1000 times: Someone says "DDG is bad" or "DDG is good" and all of the replies are basically "No, DDG is ". Let's try something new: Let's give examples. I'll go first: Let's say I have a nebulous recollection that there is a wifi module with "NRF" in the model number. If I search for `nrf wifi` on both Google and DDG, which do you think provides better results? Let's look at the top URL…

>Let's try something new: Let's give examples.

Maybe better: Let's make (or find) a benchmark for web search.

Re: Google Alternatives

#143

Post by jaspax »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #114
jaspax wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that an algorithm "designed to the benefit of the users" is nearly as straightforward as you think it is. We didn't get into the current situation because Google deliberately chose to make their algorithm friendly to marketers; we got here because marketers competed with each other to rank up in search results, effectively reverse-engineering Google's algorithm in an effort to exploit it. This would hap…

> We didn't get into the current situation because Google deliberately chose to make their algorithm friendly to marketers. This isn't quite true. Google has changed its search results in recent years to cut out content from more than a decade or so ago. You can no longer find the content even if you search for the exact strings in the website. If you have your own old site, it is easy to see from the logs that the G…

Good point; this is in addition to their other missteps and contributes to the problem. The early web was less commercial, so phasing out old results pushes ever harder for commercial results over others.

Re: Google Alternatives

#144

Post by GoblinSlayer »

piyush_soni wrote: post #109
edgyquant wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with bing, and I could be wrong for it, is I’m not looking to replace one data mining company with another. I’d much rather give a smaller, up and coming, company my searches.

That an endless cycle. You give your time and money to a 'smaller' company (thinking they're not as evil), but soon they become big corporations and start doing the same kind of things. :)

I switched search engines several times, had no problem with it. If you're afraid of abstinence syndrome, you can rotate them: monday - searx, tuesday - qwant, wednesday - mojeek, thursday - duck, friday - yandex, saturday - ecosia, sunday - gibiru.

Re: Google Alternatives

#145

Post by tibyat »

mikkom wrote: post #122
garyrichardson wrote: post #8

I've tried really hard to not use google for search. But DDG is bad. I have it set as my default search. I find myself either: 1) trying duck duck go and then immediately re-searching in google to actually get relevant answers. 2) skipping the search bar and going immediately to google when I know DDG just isn't going to work. Feels like back in the olden days when you had to try Altavista, Lycos and Yahoo to find wh…

Duckduckgo id basically anonymized bing. I'm a little bit surprised that http://startpage.com isn't on the list, it's anonymized google in the same way ddg is anonymized bing.

These DDG comments, both from GP and parent, are one of those argument patterns that you read on HN every single week.

Has anyone tried to make a browser extension to filter this repetitive topic type thing? i.e. once I've read the echo chamber view on a given topic 12 times, it seems you could identify it and filter out future occurrences. It would be a great way to keep the content on here and reddit feeling fresh.

Re: Google Alternatives

#146

Post by ArtDev »

garyrichardson wrote: post #8

I've tried really hard to not use google for search. But DDG is bad. I have it set as my default search. I find myself either: 1) trying duck duck go and then immediately re-searching in google to actually get relevant answers. 2) skipping the search bar and going immediately to google when I know DDG just isn't going to work. Feels like back in the olden days when you had to try Altavista, Lycos and Yahoo to find wh…

I found DDG to give me better results for everyday things except for work related.

Google is good at finding very specific error messages and other strings.

I have a theory: Technically Google is better but the search results suffer from every marketer and publisher trying to game the system.

Re: Google Alternatives

#147

Post by huhtenberg »

mikkom wrote: post #122
garyrichardson wrote: post #8

I've tried really hard to not use google for search. But DDG is bad. I have it set as my default search. I find myself either: 1) trying duck duck go and then immediately re-searching in google to actually get relevant answers. 2) skipping the search bar and going immediately to google when I know DDG just isn't going to work. Feels like back in the olden days when you had to try Altavista, Lycos and Yahoo to find wh…

Duckduckgo id basically anonymized bing. I'm a little bit surprised that http://startpage.com isn't on the list, it's anonymized google in the same way ddg is anonymized bing.

A year ago StartPage sold a majority stake to, what essentially is, an advertising and marketing company - System 1 Group.

Not necessarily a bad thing, but I have zero trust that these new owners will not succumb to some common and oh-so-effective shenanigans to improve their ad performance in the StartPage search results. That's like selling a rehab facility to a drug cartel. A match made in heaven.

Re: Google Alternatives

#148

Post by huhtenberg »

bmn__ wrote: post #126
phendrenad2 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've done this song and dance 1000 times: Someone says "DDG is bad" or "DDG is good" and all of the replies are basically "No, DDG is ". Let's try something new: Let's give examples. I'll go first: Let's say I have a nebulous recollection that there is a wifi module with "NRF" in the model number. If I search for `nrf wifi` on both Google and DDG, which do you think provides better results? Let's look at the top URL…

You found what you're looking for on the first page and on the first try for both. IMO that's a resounding success.

Not in 2020.

A simple keyword match, even if weighted, is no longer enough. The engine needs to grok the context of a query. Chances of someone's using a generic query to find a blog instead of a vendor's site are basically zero.

Re: Google Alternatives

#149

Post by pferde »

Seb-C wrote: post #131
mackrevinack wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got better results once i set the location to the country I live in

This thing used to work until maybe half a year ago. Before, I was getting proper localized results. Even searching in Japan with English keywords gave me Japanese results. Nowadays when I search even for simple things it does not work. If I look for "dominos pizza" in Japan, I get: dominos.com allmenuprice.com dominosaruba.com dominospanama.com dominos.ca dominos.com.au dominos.co.in dominos.co.nz ... And it goes on…

I consider that a feature. I really do not want my search results to depend on where in the world I am searching from. If I am looking for something regional, I can always add country name or "site:XX" to the keywords. But ultimately it is me who decides that I want a regional result.

This works rather well with DDG (I've been a happy DDG user for many years now).

On the other hand, I understand that I'm probably a minority in this, most people just want their search engine to essentially read their minds and they do not want to think about it too much.

Re: Google Alternatives

#150

Post by neiman »

There's also Almonit (I'm one of the creators), which is a decentralized search engine that looks like a Google alternative, but it only searches decentralized websites, so it's not.

almonit.eth.link/

Almonit is based on IPFS and it would actually be interesting to make a real Google alternative based on the idea of IPFS.

Post reply on HN