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What If Google Wasn't the Default?

matt-rickard.com

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Re: What If Google Wasn't the Default?

#41

Post by jeroenhd »

sshine wrote: post #36
chrismorgan wrote: post #34

> Gmail works best on Chrome. Is this true, and if so, in what way? > Google Docs uses cutting-edge features first (or only) found on Chrome. Such as? (I haven’t been a Google user for over six years, but back then neither of these were true, to my knowledge—if anything, Gmail worked better on Firefox due to significantly lower resource usage—and I can’t imagine what could have changed. Google Meet I’d understand, wo…

> > Gmail works best on Chrome. > Is this true, and if so, in what way? I don't know about Gmail, but Google Translate won't let me use speech functionality in Firefox. Tangential: Microsoft Teams mostly works in Firefox, but they have some arbitrary limitations: I can't call someone via Teams or pick up the phone if someone calls me via Teams. But I can make a video conference with someone who isn't at work, and the…

> I don't know about Gmail, but Google Translate won't let me use speech functionality in Firefox.

Speech output works fine here (Firefox, Ubuntu 23.04). I remember needing to install some kind of system speech synthesis feature on my OS to get web speech to work, though, because Firefox doesn't have one of their own like Chrome.

As for speech input: Firefox doesn't implement the recognition part of the Web Speech API (demo here https://mdn.github.io/dom-examples/web-speech-api/speech-col...). In fact, every implementation is one with a browser prefix (https://caniuse.com/speech-recognition) so it's no wonder Firefox isn't supported yet.

As for Teams: Microsoft doesn't care about the 3% Firefox users they get and they simply don't test, that's my conclusion. Back when Teams simply threw up a "your browser is not supported" the whole thing worked 95% if you spoofed the user agent and the modifications to fix the rest weren't all that hard (Firefox has some audio input/output implementation differences).

Re: What If Google Wasn't the Default?

#43

Post by hoseja »

pierat wrote: post #32
rightbyte wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bing still sucks If I were to form a search habit today I don't think I would grade Bing lower than Google. Google has gotten way worse and Bing way better. Bing seems to respect the user's querries more too.

Try Yandex next time. It searches exactly what you look for, and has no 'removed for piracy' search deindexes.

Power of not being within reach of the US copyright cartel. (Bought by being in the grasp of another, even worse one.)

Re: What If Google Wasn't the Default?

#44

Post by jsnell »

matesz wrote: post #8

If potential antitrust case againts Google search would be valid, could it be mitigated with Google making google search as a platform? For example another company could run google search on example.com and give let's say percentage of that revenue back to Google?

They've offered that for a long time, e.g. Startpage, Mullvad Leta, and Kagi are supposedly using that API.

The pricing isn't public AFAIK, but a revshare like you suggest seems unlikely.

Re: What If Google Wasn't the Default?

#45

Post by pierat »

hoseja wrote: post #43
pierat wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try Yandex next time. It searches exactly what you look for, and has no 'removed for piracy' search deindexes.

Power of not being within reach of the US copyright cartel. (Bought by being in the grasp of another, even worse one.)

And?

At least our information won't easily cross those territorial boundaries.

Re: What If Google Wasn't the Default?

#46

Post by uneekname »

John7149 wrote: post #12
uneekname wrote: post #9

Google is quite sticky indeed. Having tried a few alternatives, I keep coming back to it because it helps me get things done the fastest. It would be relatively easy for Apple to switch their default search engine, but quite difficult to switch it to something better. That said I hope they do, and I hope to see more and better search engine competitors in the future.

Kagi and You.com are way better than Google. Searches are usually within 1 page result unlike Google these days peppered with so many ads that the thing I look for usually at page 10-20 range. The only downside is they are paid service. Google stickyness is because it is free using us as product just like Meta. If you forho it being free, Kagi and You.com are great alternative. DDG is also free but due to way it mone…

I'll look into You.com. I gave Kagi a shot recently, paid for a month and set it as my default. To be honest, the results weren't good enough for me and I ended up cancelling my subscription. I am willing to pay that much for my search engine, but it has to do better than Google.

I use a strict adblocker, so finding what I'm looking for on the Google search results page is actually quite easy for me. I recommend checking out uBlock Origin[0] if you haven't already.

[0] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

Edit: You.com is a mildly interesting product, but not what I'm looking for at all. It has more ads than Google, and the default is to send my query to OpenAI and wait for it to spit some text out. No thanks

Re: What If Google Wasn't the Default?

#47

Post by helmsb »

I switched to Kagi and really like it. It really shows you what's possible when you're not optimizing for ads.

Lots of cool functionality like:

Lenses: Allows you to run a search to prioritize certain domains to give you a particular "lens" to view it through.

Personalized results: Allows you to give additional weight or decrease the weight of certain domains.

Search Bangs: Shortcuts for executing the search somewhere else like Reddit, Wikipédia, Google, etc.

I decided to pay for it not because of the ads or privacy or anything else but because it allows me to make "search" work better for my needs.

Re: What If Google Wasn't the Default?

#48

Post by SllX »

mrweasel wrote: post #16
SllX wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Apple has the resources to go into a lot of businesses they don’t necessarily want to be in and they seem happy enough with the Google arrangement. They like to own and control the technologies core to their products, but even they have to draw a line otherwise they’d be building and running their own fabs. Plus Microsoft also has a lot of money and talent and have been in the search business a very long time…

> Bing still sucks Bing is actually really really good these days, but was it worth the investment? I can understand that Microsoft want some of that R&D money back, but I really wish they would have kept focus on Windows and taken the high road and made it better, more secure, more private and then thrown Bing in Googles face without the ads and tracking, just to prove that "the big boys" make money on selling actua…

> but I really wish they would have kept focus on Windows and taken the high road and made it better, more secure, more private and then thrown Bing in Googles face without the ads and tracking

I too wish more companies existed that didn’t sell out their users but what you’re asking for was never Ballmer’s Microsoft’s MO, and it doesn’t seem to be the case for Satya Nadella’s Microsoft either based off the reporting I’ve been reading on the increased enshittification of Windows 11 over time.

Re: What If Google Wasn't the Default?

#49

Post by D13Fd »

uneekname wrote: post #46
John7149 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kagi and You.com are way better than Google. Searches are usually within 1 page result unlike Google these days peppered with so many ads that the thing I look for usually at page 10-20 range. The only downside is they are paid service. Google stickyness is because it is free using us as product just like Meta. If you forho it being free, Kagi and You.com are great alternative. DDG is also free but due to way it mone…

I'll look into You.com. I gave Kagi a shot recently, paid for a month and set it as my default. To be honest, the results weren't good enough for me and I ended up cancelling my subscription. I am willing to pay that much for my search engine, but it has to do better than Google. I use a strict adblocker, so finding what I'm looking for on the Google search results page is actually quite easy for me. I recommend chec…

> I gave Kagi a shot recently, paid for a month and set it as my default. To be honest, the results weren't good enough for me and I ended up cancelling my subscription. I am willing to pay that much for my search engine, but it has to do better than Google.

That's surprising to me. I find Kagi's results to be better than Google most of the time. Sometimes they are really exceptional, with searches I thought would be tough taking me straight to the right page. Maybe it depends on what you tend to search for.

Re: What If Google Wasn't the Default?

#50

Post by D13Fd »

nicky0 wrote: post #31
tuyiown wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I converted to paying on kagi the promise that the first tier was enough for most users. It was not, and I didn't considered I would be a heavy user before hand. 2nd tier price is not acceptable to me since the UI/UX is not polished enough (search input reset is not something that should slip in production ever). I also had to revert to google for shopping results, kagi is suppose to have some, but not for me apparen…

They recently changed the pricing. It's now $5/mo for 300 searches or $10/mo for unlimited searches. I'm on the $10 because it seems I do about 600 searches a month. For me it's a bargain, I could never go back to Google.

Same. I was around 600 too. And I hope to never go back to Google.
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