This reminds me of a blog post a former exec of Mozilla put out saying Google had been intentionally breaking things to get users to jump ship to Chrome.
www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed
161–170 of 320 posts
Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed
#162Another reason to stop using Google. Don't waste the opportunity! Switched to DDG ages ago, and even though it's not amazing, it's already better than Google. Although, if we're honest, searching these days is absolutely atrocious everywhere. Any keyword search will only net you ads or "top X" articles full of SEO garbage most likely written by AI at this point...
Unfortunately I'm locked into gmail, migrating away from it would require days of effort and I would never be sure I moved everything. Also, YouTube is still the best video site despite going full mask-off on adblockers.
Fastmail -> settings -> migration -> import
Then set up a gmail forwarding rule.
The full documentation is here:
https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/360058752414-Mig...
Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
For people who don't know them yet: use DDG bangs. For example "!m restaurant [citynmae]" will immediately bring you to Google maps, "!w chemistry" will open Wikipedia etc. Super easy and powerful :)
DDG was great anyway, but discovering their !bangs was a revelation. Super cool stuff!
Been using these !bangs for a while.. also works with bang!
Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
Setting stuff up for that in any browser worth it's salt isn't too difficult, skipping the entire middleman of any search engine.
But it's already set up for you in DDG, so why not use it? Aside from the fact it's another HTTP request, but these days on the majority of computers and connections, that's a trivial thing. I'll add that !aw to search the Arch Wiki and !aur to search the AUR are my two most favorite commands.
> But it's already set up for you in DDG, so why not use it?
Because if I wanna search Reddit, I'd prefer to have '!r' search directly within Reddit and not litter my browser history with tons of duckduckgo entries like this:
https://duckduckgo.com/l/?uddg=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%...
Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed
#165Another reason to stop using Google. Don't waste the opportunity! Switched to DDG ages ago, and even though it's not amazing, it's already better than Google. Although, if we're honest, searching these days is absolutely atrocious everywhere. Any keyword search will only net you ads or "top X" articles full of SEO garbage most likely written by AI at this point...
Unfortunately I'm locked into gmail, migrating away from it would require days of effort and I would never be sure I moved everything. Also, YouTube is still the best video site despite going full mask-off on adblockers.
I migrated about 5 different Gmail accounts off of Gmail to FastMail and it wasn't too bad. Though it was at least a day of work across all of them.
I honestly spent more time trying to wrangle the data in all of the other numerous Google services those accounts had data with.
Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed
#166Is there any legitimate use for UA string sniffing vs feature detection? And what could a search engine possibly do that's so bleeding edge it doesn't work in all browsers?
yesn't
basically you can send slightly less data by only sending the relevant layout/js code etc. with the first request instead of sending some variation which then the browser selects/branches one
most likely a terrible optimization for most sides maybe not google search due to how much it's called
but then Google is (as far as I remember) also the company which has tried to push the removal of UA strings (by fixating all UA strings to the same string, or at least a small set of strings)... so quite ironic
Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think everyone in the thread knows about "search engines" in Chrome and bookmark keywords in Firefox. The crux of the issue is that there are more than 10,000 bang commands in DDG. Setting up even a popular subset in any given browser is a significant investment. It's fine if it's the browser you use 99% of the time, but for those spanning multiple computers, phones, and other devices, simply using bang commands is…
99% of the time you use <0.1% of the bangs, so setting those up isn't a significant investment. Then there are also the downsides mentioned above (less convenient, no preview, not portable across search engines), so no, it's not a strict win, but an inferior alternative which is superior only in those cases where you can't setup something better
If I went that route, I’d have to set them up on my phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, etc, all of which have different operating systems/web browsers.
I guess I could implement them as a web server, and point all my devices at it.
Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed
#168Another reason to stop using Google. Don't waste the opportunity! Switched to DDG ages ago, and even though it's not amazing, it's already better than Google. Although, if we're honest, searching these days is absolutely atrocious everywhere. Any keyword search will only net you ads or "top X" articles full of SEO garbage most likely written by AI at this point...
Unfortunately I'm locked into gmail, migrating away from it would require days of effort and I would never be sure I moved everything. Also, YouTube is still the best video site despite going full mask-off on adblockers.
I am in a similar boat with an ages old Gmail account. My comment was originally intended to be only about Google search (I realize now I didn't specify that, lol), but leaving the entire ecosystem is definitely a lot harder...
Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it's already set up for you in DDG, so why not use it? Aside from the fact it's another HTTP request, but these days on the majority of computers and connections, that's a trivial thing. I'll add that !aw to search the Arch Wiki and !aur to search the AUR are my two most favorite commands.
> But it's already set up for you in DDG, so why not use it? Because if I wanna search Reddit, I'd prefer to have '!r' search directly within Reddit and not litter my browser history with tons of duckduckgo entries like this: https://duckduckgo.com/l/?uddg=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%...
weird example considering just how bad Reddit's internal search is and always has been -- that's a site I've always preferred to search with an external search engine, be it Google, DDG, or Kagi lol
doesn't hurt to have options! to each his own
Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed
#170Another reason to stop using Google. Don't waste the opportunity! Switched to DDG ages ago, and even though it's not amazing, it's already better than Google. Although, if we're honest, searching these days is absolutely atrocious everywhere. Any keyword search will only net you ads or "top X" articles full of SEO garbage most likely written by AI at this point...
Well I was using firefox and google maps.
Apple maps is Yelp spam.
What should I be doing? I was doing research