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

Leaving Google has actively improved my life

pseudosingleton.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 273 posts

Re: Leaving Google has actively improved my life

#261

Post by iguhhyfchh »

drnick1 wrote: post #186
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 problem is that people want a "free internet" without ads Just run an ad blocker and be done with it. The business model of the website is not my problem; if websites cannot cover their costs without printing ads that I do not want to see, then they will disappear. We will be left with websites that are actually useful, for example businesses operating a website to sell things, or that are funded through donati…

[dead]

Re: Leaving Google has actively improved my life

#262

Post by iguhhyfchh »

layer8 wrote: post #211
bengale wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government email, sounds great. Sign me up.

I’m assuming a sane country where the right to privacy [0] holds. [0] e.g.: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/American_Convention_on_Human_...

[dead]

Re: Leaving Google has actively improved my life

#264

Post by LinuxGamer »

al_borland wrote: post #144
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…

I had a similar experience with DDG. I felt like I had to add “!g” to everything, which doesn’t actually move one away from Google, it just creates friction. Kagi, however, has been a different experience for me. I haven’t felt the need to go to Google at all. If I can’t find it with Kagi, I’m confident I won’t find it with Google either. There have also been several times where I was on an outage call with a double…

Yep, I came to this thread looking for excuses to switch to a different free non-Google search but everywhere you go there are Kagi recommendations. I've been loving it for the past year.

Re: Leaving Google has actively improved my life

#265

Post by bubblewand »

eudamoniac wrote: post #260
bubblewand wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually-free gets suppressed by free-with-ads. We don’t know how much the truly free hobbyist-volunteer ecosystem would pick up without competition from ad-supported options (often with deep pockets for advertising and promotion, plus monopolist positioning to cross-promote with other products in some cases). Ad-supported options suppress usership of truly free options, which suppresses interest in volunteering time…

All you are saying here is that the sites with ads are so much better than the actually-free sites that people still use them despite having ads. Which is maybe not a signal that ads need to be banned.

I’m saying that actually-free services and sites have no budget for promotion and become very hard to discover when drowned out by tons of ad-supported options, which drives down use, which discourages participation in improving them which suppresses how good they tend to be.

Re: Leaving Google has actively improved my life

#266

Post by Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe »

eudamoniac wrote: post #260
bubblewand wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually-free gets suppressed by free-with-ads. We don’t know how much the truly free hobbyist-volunteer ecosystem would pick up without competition from ad-supported options (often with deep pockets for advertising and promotion, plus monopolist positioning to cross-promote with other products in some cases). Ad-supported options suppress usership of truly free options, which suppresses interest in volunteering time…

All you are saying here is that the sites with ads are so much better than the actually-free sites that people still use them despite having ads. Which is maybe not a signal that ads need to be banned.

In a world with add it's not the best site that wins but the site that games mass psychology the best.

Re: Leaving Google has actively improved my life

#268

Post by duttish »

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…

I read a bunch of comments agreeing with this anecdote so I'll offer my own counter anecdote.

I don't know if it's what kind of information I'm searching for or something else but adding a !g has never helped for me. If ddg results is shit google has also been shit but with loads of ads. I barely bother trying anymore.

Re: Leaving Google has actively improved my life

#269

Post by rdm_blackhole »

layer8 wrote: post #211
bengale wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government email, sounds great. Sign me up.

I’m assuming a sane country where the right to privacy [0] holds. [0] e.g.: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/American_Convention_on_Human_...

I can't wait for the EU to preemptively delete emails with language that is supposedly deemed offensive or possibly containing misinformation or god forbid, pictures of my nieces and nephews which could be interpreted as child grooming.

Yes, we should all let the governments decide if we should have access to our email addresses and pinky promise they won't use your data against you if one day you decide to disparage the sitting president/prime minister of the country you reside in.

Corporations bad! Government good! M'kay!

Re: Leaving Google has actively improved my life

#270

Post by gdmka »

Lots of valid points in the article.

What I like about Brave Search is the quality of its AI answers compared to rivals. For quick fact-checks, it's pretty decent when I only need to extract 1-2 sentences.

Best thing of Brave search was to adopt the bang[0] syntax. It really helps to quickly redirect to YouTube, DDG, IMDB and Google when needed.

Regarding Gmail, I've read so many Google account suspension horror stories out here, that I'm legitimately scared to loose access if I do anything out of the ordinary. So I shifted from Gmail as my primary email service.

I paid for Proton mail for about a year, but the most basic paid account is very limited for my needs. Ended up purchasing Migadu Micro and a domain. The ability to own a domain and an email service is very underrated.

Catch-all is an absolutely must have for any decent mail service, yet, impossible with dedicated mail services such as Gmail or Proton. And there’s no better way to combat spam and unsolicited emails than server-side bouncing.

[0]: https://support.brave.app/hc/en-us/articles/4410152384781-Wh...

Post reply on HN