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

Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

degoogle.jmoore.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 665 posts

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#41

Post by autisticcurio »

chongli wrote: post #13
awestroke wrote: post #4

The list of alternatives just makes me lose hope of cutting out Google. They are lightyears ahead of the alternatives in so many categories.

I use DDG for search full time and I’ve found that I need to use !g less and less often. For the times I do use !g I am finding myself increasingly disappointed in the results. I think Google is losing the war against spamdexing [1] and I think the search industry is ripe for disruptive innovation. I have seen and participated in a number of discussions here on HN about the potential for a new search engine that elim…

If you put in a request to DDG to have entries linked to phrases removed from their search engine under EU GDPR or EU Right to be Forgotten, they will have an external law firm write back and tell you they get their results from Yahoo, Bing and other search engines and you need to contact those search engines direct. Google have actually been the fastest at getting my data out of their system, Microsoft never got back to me despite repeated requests, Facebook would rather believe Norfolk Constabulary instead of me despite being the copyright owner. So many criminals control your life, most of you dont realise it.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#44

Post by DavideNL »

dnr wrote: post #25
gonehome wrote: post #17

I dropped all google services and it wasn’t that hard. The most tedious part is moving accounts from your gmail to your new email (I switched to using my own domain backed by fastmail). Even with a password manager and a list of all my accounts this took me an entire day. You also learn how terrible most non-software company account management is. On a lot of sites changing email is impossible. On some it lets you do…

An entire day! I wish it were that easy. My password manager says I have 331 accounts using my gmail address. I figure it'll take me a year to move everything if I spend a couple hours a week. I categorized them into tiers based on importance and still ended up with 63 in the top "important or regularly use" tier and 59 in the next "will probably use again" tier. The lower tiers, I'll probably not even bother with.

Same here, but I simply forwarded ALL incomming e-mail from my old Gmail to my new email address. That way, i did not have to change all website accounts at once.

So I slowly updated a lot of less important accounts/websites to my new email address over the period of 1+ year.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#46

Post by actuator »

chongli wrote: post #13
awestroke wrote: post #4

The list of alternatives just makes me lose hope of cutting out Google. They are lightyears ahead of the alternatives in so many categories.

I use DDG for search full time and I’ve found that I need to use !g less and less often. For the times I do use !g I am finding myself increasingly disappointed in the results. I think Google is losing the war against spamdexing [1] and I think the search industry is ripe for disruptive innovation. I have seen and participated in a number of discussions here on HN about the potential for a new search engine that elim…

Even after using DDG for the last 5-6 years, I find myself always using !g with it. So much that, it has become a muscle memory thing and sometimes I type it involuntarily.

Sure, if I just care about US specific results and I am doing an exact term search or maybe StackOverflow result is my target, DDG comes close but Google gets context of things much better. I keep finding much better search results that had more context with my search. I don't know how to quantify/measure this but to me Google Search is still much better.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#47

Post by bastardoperator »

chongli wrote: post #13
awestroke wrote: post #4

The list of alternatives just makes me lose hope of cutting out Google. They are lightyears ahead of the alternatives in so many categories.

I use DDG for search full time and I’ve found that I need to use !g less and less often. For the times I do use !g I am finding myself increasingly disappointed in the results. I think Google is losing the war against spamdexing [1] and I think the search industry is ripe for disruptive innovation. I have seen and participated in a number of discussions here on HN about the potential for a new search engine that elim…

I've found personally, that nearly everyone of my DDG searches results in a subsequent Google search with more relevant data. It sucks too because I would rather use DDG on principle alone. I will agree, results in Google do seem worse, but until someone can give Google a run for their money they'll continue down the path they're currently on which is collect all the data for profit. Also, Yandex images, vastly superior.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#48

Post by Taek »

aj_nikhil wrote: post #43

I have been using Duck duck go for few months now. Never missed Google. Slowly I will shift other services as well. It's a matter of societal good that we degoogle. Else Google will become strongest company ever created by mankind.

Google has gotten a lot worse over the past 2 years. The SEO spam has outpaced Google's ability to find actually relevant results.

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#49

Post by techsupporter »

judge2020 wrote: post #35
techsupporter wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially one that Google weren't even going to let the rest of us use (an entire "generic" top-level domain to use as a globally-routable in-house domain...) and only capitulated after it seemed like the pressure on ICANN might cause them to Do Something About That.

Have context? Algolia search isn't working well for me, or I don't know which keywords would lead me to the story.

Here's a story from The Reg in 2015: https://www.theregister.com/2015/03/13/google_developer_gtld...

They quote from Google's application for .dev in 2013: "The proposed gTLD will provide Google with direct association to the term 'dev', which is an abbreviation of the word 'development'. The mission of this gTLD, .dev, is to provide a dedicated domain space in which Google can enact second-level domains specific to its projects in development."

Google finally opened it to registration in 2019, four years later: https://www.theregister.com/2019/02/21/google_launches_dev/

(Google also added .dev to the HSTS preload list so browsers expect names in that domain to only be reachable via HTTPS, thus breaking in-house uses of .dev.)

Re: Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life

#50

Post by jacobwilliamroy »

Efuveo wrote: post #36
jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's purpose is to help the NSA circumvent congress. Google is here to stay until further notice.

This thread is filled with juicy dumb comments, but you certainly win.

Seriously? Have you not read any of the snowden leaks?
Post reply on HN