Move to Firefox (or any non-Chromium browser really) and use a different search engine that's not run by a giant corporation. I use DuckDuckGo.
this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
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Doesn't DuckDuckGo just use Bing and suppress search results?
It supposedly uses Bing and several other search results while suppressing content mills. I'm open to using anything though, DDG just happens to be the more privacy oriented one I went with.
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(13 replies)
Yes, so use SearX which uses all the search engines, including google, duckduckgo and Bing, but shares 0 of your data with them.
Yeah but you either have to use some rando's instance or host your own. That's not exactly safe or easy to use.
It's a nice project though.
You can always change instance every few searches in case there is logging
Who tf is going to do that when you can just use an alternative?
I do it. There is no alternative.
Yes.
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Or just pay Kagi. If you're not paying they're gonna have to get their money somewhere, and search is expensive.
if it's not open source I don't trust it
I started getting targeted ads on DDG this morning. They were targeting my search terms, and Microsoft had bought the targets. Getting Edge ads in DDG is a hard stop for me.
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Teddy Roosevelt's ghost, come back and bust this trust.
Leave Big G in the dust, ads on their video platform are just grift and lust.
I'm not sure why this is supposedly either surprising or malevolent. Google spends a significant amount of money on developing Chrome and then gives it away for free; clearly they must be making money off of it in some other way. Their usual approach to making money off of things they provide for free is to show the users ads, and defaulting to Google search is how Chrome does that. I don't think this is any different from saying that YouTube or Gmail exist to serve Google's ad business (which they clearly do).
What's funny to me is that I've heard of companies that really do provide a free version of their product without ads or any other way to make money off of it directly. Their goal is to protect their enterprise version of the software (which is not free) by reducing people's motivation to make an open-source competitor. I could see Google maintaining Chrome without their search engine as the default in order to prevent someone else from creating a popular browser which does have a default search engine that isn't Google's, but that actually seems more anti-competitive...
I think your second half is bang on the nail for the missing part of this story. It is not just to drive search directly, it is also to control the browser market long term.
That's what Microsoft did very successfully with Internet Explorer too. They have it away for free and bundled it with Windows, killing all competition and then used that to leverage MSN. They also didn't follow standards and through market dominance shaped the internet.
Google sort of follows standards but they have also forced through proprietary standards or have broken code which is why some websites don't work well in Firefox or Safari even now.
Chromium may be open source but it is a tool used by Google to control and dominate the internet.
Apple is exactly the same with WebKit - they talk about privacy and security but the real motivation is surpressong alternate routes to the internet from their devices whic then keeps iron control over payment methods particularly in iOS. Yet people in the apple eco system buy into the narrative that the one piece of software you're not allowed in iOS is a non apple web browser, as if that is an acceptable approach. It's just another manifestation of anti competitive behaviour and the power and money you can get by "free" software.
To be fair, with Apple it’s kind of both. Because they make a large chunk of their gazillions off hardware, they can make privacy part of their platform and mean it.
Whereas with Google, trolling your private information to sell you more stuff is all they are, and everything else serves this.
It may not be perfect, but in my opinion it’s ok to view the former as a better option than the latter. If convenience and integration are also important to you.
it really frustrates me how Apple stole Konqueror from KDE and branded it as safari and now treats it like its own browser that's supposedly more private than the open source work it's based on
Are you surprised? Chrome, Chromebook and Android are mere vessels to get data.
And this is a surprise for whom?
Next they’ll tell me that Alexa and Kindles are just there to sell me stuff.
Pretty much everything Google makes exists solely to power it's ad service - including it's search engine. That's literally their whole business. Did anyone think that Google was building browsers just as a fun weekend project?
In other words, water is wet, grass is green, and the sky is blue.
Blud no shit
In fact, we all exist to serve Google. Hail the blessings of the corporation!
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the Assistant team has admitted that the product does not have a market fit on mobile
How is there not a market demand for a voice assistant on mobile devices?
I read this too and scratched my head. I would argue that voice assistants are more useful on a mobile device than a stationary one 💀
I’d guess because there is an OS assistant that’s hard to change.
I have ecosia set as my default search engine on chrome. and only use chrome for those instances when firefox doesn't serve the need.
I haven't verified this is still the case, but in the past every URL you typed into Chrome GoogleBot would then index shortly later.
ETA: Did a test and it doesn't seem to happen any more.
I work in SEO and have had many URLs that are orphaned and I go to them directly. It wasn’t until I asked Google to index via Search Console, or had it added to a site map and pinged Googlebot, that it would get indexed. You can live check if a page is indexed by using the site operator and entering the URL.
If what you said was true, then even orphaned pages would be indexed from a visit and that just is not my experience as a professional.
Yeah I made a unique HTML page on Friday and retrieved it in a stock version of Chrome. As of today there have been no GoogleBot hits on it.
I've been loving Kagi, but I have no particular need for their browser.
ETA: Oh, I see it's only for iOS and macOS anyway. Maybe that ecosystem needed it, but I wouldn't know.
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If they release a non-chromium windows counterpart (not sure if WebKit works on windows?) I'd seriously consider it. Eagerly awaiting it!
....obviously.
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