51–60 of 247 posts
I'll consider Google alternatives when there is a better alternative. Until then I use the best technology. Do we really need these same posts every other week?
Most "privacy-centric" search engines I've seen – especially DDG – do not approach this, probably since they use Bing results, which is just as inflexible and SEO-able as Google. Has anyone had a good experience with a search engine that implements a novel crawler and/or ranking algorithm?
I've been trying Yandex for some searches lately, and it's results seem a little less commercially catered, but there are indeed some serious privacy concerns with it [0].
I have been holding a belief lately that a nonprofit search engine that scrapes & ranks in a way that is not commercially-driven is the single most important missing piece of digital infrastructure... anyone share this view?
[0] https://nelsonslog.wordpress.com/2020/01/07/facial-recogniti...
I feel like all that's ever talked about here as bad about search is privacy. But what about good results? Google search results have an extremely heavy commercial bias. What would the internet look like without that? I would really like to have a say in how the ranking algorithm works. If I could, for example, exclude results from the Alexa Top 100k with a toggle, I bet I'd find interesting content a lot easier. Mos…
Google is becoming more annoying by the day. It has become customary for it to force the user to accept privacy-leaking features by grouping them together with other useful features. This kind of sneaky behavior I don't like at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
you can '!g search' in ddg to search google instead
That adds more time since the query is sent to DDG and then bounces the browser to Google. For searches where one prefers Google, using it directly (which is easier in Firefox for me) is a better option.
Wish there was more info on the difference between these services. I really admire DDG but I don't think they check their ads well. I have been taken in by a scam ad once before. For email, I've been using fastmail ever since I asked this[1] two years ago. It is terrific. It also provides a calendar. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18054574
Also came here to mention Fastmail, and was surprised it wasn't in the list in the OP.
I'll consider Google alternatives when there is a better alternative. Until then I use the best technology. Do we really need these same posts every other week?
I feel like all that's ever talked about here as bad about search is privacy. But what about good results? Google search results have an extremely heavy commercial bias. What would the internet look like without that? I would really like to have a say in how the ranking algorithm works. If I could, for example, exclude results from the Alexa Top 100k with a toggle, I bet I'd find interesting content a lot easier. Mos…
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…
These are good if you're seeking to replace a single Google product, but if you're invested in the Google ecosystem it's a real pain in the ass to stitch together 15 individual alternative products. It sucks.
The list is a bit fragmented. It doesn't really give Nextcloud enough credit. Nextcloud can replace _most_ of google in one shot -- calendar, reminders, contacts, drive, docs, hangouts, maps, photos, and more ( https://apps.nextcloud.com/ ). I think it's not as popular because 1. it's not free (as in beer, but it is free as in speech) and 2. it's kind of fiddly to get up and running. You can either host it yourself o…