But on Google Pixel for example, you have no trivial way to get rid of the google search bar on every pagw on your home screen, and the global phone search also always uses google for the web results. This can only be changed by replacing the launcher or OS. this is not a fair competition. Google are abaolutely abusing their ability to control the platform.
I personally use DuckDuckGo, but if you’re just after avoiding handing your searches over to Google there are other more “palatably-named” alternatives like Startpage, OneSearch, Ecosia etc.
I assume you’re not using, and have never used, Google (a silly sounding, misspelled math term that sounds like a sound a baby would make), Bing (sillier yet), Yahoo (it sounds almost as ridiculous as “Google” and their early advertising only made it worse), Yandex (what is it, a cleaning product or a search engine?), Baidu (sounds like a name from a children’s show), Seznam (sounds like a sauce), Brave (literally the same name as a children’s movie), Searx (someone tried to be cool by replacing “ch” with “x”… c’mon), or Qwant (bless you!). I’m curious, though… which search engine do you use?
Absolutely, also the old and obscure blogs, and the non-English websites of the world. Basically it is what Google was 10-15 years ago, and since it is not western, no DMCA fuks given, and they will not gimp their products – search results and reverse image tools.
It might be a myth, but it would probably be the best search engine.
Bing is too good, they’re trying to capture market share and likely operating it at a loss. But if people leave Google, it’s most likely because they dont want tracked. And Microsoft is probably at best just as bad as Google.
A go between that anonimizes the results would be exactly what people want.
Their own CEO admits they are required to allow Microsoft tracking in their "privacy" browser due to the contract for search. They use Bing for search, it's not a myth.
For non-search tracker blocking (eg in our browser), we block most third-party trackers. Unfortunately our Microsoft search syndication agreement prevents us from doing more to Microsoft-owned properties. However, we have been continually pushing and expect to be doing more soon.
The first half of the first page is all ads now on Google. It’s utter shit - the things it’s a lot better at than DDG is NLP, being able to understand questions, and anything news related. If you know exactly what you’re searching for though, using the old style of search words works great on DDG
When I built my PC last year I decided to just let Edge and Bing go for a bit instead of immediately downloading another browser or changing the search engine. I can count on one hand the number of times I needed to enter in Google.com to get a different or better result. And almost every one of those was because I wanted a google maps results and not whatever weird maps MS has.
I used to be able to search for a tracking number by Google and it would link to the correct delivery tracking service. About 1-2 months ago Google stopped doing this and just gives no results. Why would they stop linking you to FedEx or UPS? Who knows, but my wild ass guess is since Google was not able to link “related” sponsored links along with it they just removed the functionality. They are just actively making their service shittier anytime something minor doesn’t dish out a shitty ad along with it.
I’ve gone on to using Kagi and DDG. Rarely do I miss Google search.
Not sure what I am doing wrong, work is when I discovered problem. This is what happens when I try to search in android. Doesn’t work on my work pc or on mine. Maybe it is a Firefox thing?
EDIT: YUP. Tried it with chrome and DuckDuckGo browser and ups tracking search works fine. Wonder what’s going on with Firefox preventing it. Don’t think it’s an extension because doesn’t work in Firefox focus either and my work pc doesn’t have any addons.
Google search is less than useful nowadays. Google assistant seems to be Google’s inbred idiot cousin. DDG doesn’t seem to be any better. Most of my searches give the same clickbait results that google does.
Honestly, outside of Google Maps, is there any legitimate value to any google product? Is there a single search engine that is brave enough to give 0 results and also literally parses what you’re asking instead of valuating against what the advertisers want you to see?
I dream daily of Google imploding, and every single investor at that useless company going immediately bankrupt and destitute for the disgusting, addled, brain-malware they push.
Kagi looks neat but they’d have to have absolutely amazing results if they want me to pay for them, which I doubt they have… And sorry, but paying $10/month for a fucking search engine (where the actual cost per user is negligible and profit scales with number of users extremely nicely) is just insane.
I guess Google would make at most about $1/month off of ads from me… if I didn’t block them. I’d be willing to pay that, maybe up to $3 for a really good service. But this is just insane, and continues the trend of “oh you like a service that’s not complete crap? I guess you should pay an order of magnitude (or several) more than what’s necessary to provide that service, because fuck you, what can you do?”
If I had to pay for every service like that I’d probably spend $500/month just for that and then they’d still figure out that hey, we can still put ads in and make a little bit more cuz why not, what are they gonna do?
You are not wrong, but Kagi is basically still a baby. They started maybe like last summer or so? And already decreased their prices twice (well, relative prices.) I think if we give them some time there will be a good priced tier for everyone.
P.S. Search engine is not the only thing they have.
Depends on what you’re doing. I look up Linux admin stuff. DDG points to the Arch Linux wiki which is solid, even for non-Arch Linux stuff. Google points to random sponsored blog tutorials that are sometimes outdated or the author doesn’t have a full understanding of what their copy-paste terminal commands do.
Recently I used google to look up a Kotlin coding thing. It pointed to every source except the official Kotlin documentation.
My favorite is when I ask how to do something in Google Slides and Google gives me answers on how to do it in Google Docs. So helpful. Not at all frustrating.
That’s largely a problem of “modern internet culture” than anything. Resources locked behind proprietary crap like Discord “servers” is a big issue, too.
DuckDuckGo has been giving me poor results lately - especially when I look for news, everything is a redirect to Bing now - so I instead use Brave Search. It’s kind of disappointing since DDG had always worked great for me
But Weinberg testified that getting users to switch from Google was complicated, requiring as many as 30 to 50 steps to change defaults on all their devices, whereas the process could be shortened to just one click on each device.
Full disclosure, been using Duck Duck Go for a while but…
30 to 50 steps? On a Samsung it’s one click from the address bar to select a search engine and then another to select Duck, Google, yahoo, or bing.
The way it’s worded they’re adding steps for like 10 devices together.
And for it to be a single click, all the options would have to display every time you click the address bar, which would make it look like a 90s web browser.
I’m all about Duck, but that reeks of bullshit because they know most politicians don’t know as much about the internet as a 9 year old does.
You're talking abut the search bar at the top of the first home screen right? It's always google but it can be removed.
That should be fixed for sure, it's annoying. Personally I use firefox anyway so I change it to the firefox search widget which uses your firefox default.
Do people even use that? I’ve literally never. Even if I want to search something, I’d rather just use my browser where I have tabs. Relatedly, why don’t more apps have tabs? Like apps for Reddit or Lemmy. Literally none that I ever tried have tabs. I know they don’t perform that great, but not even an option?
This fucks me up to no end. I love this phone but that fucking search bar made me switch the launcher. I also love the Pixel launcher (if it wasn’t for that search bar), so I run the alpha release of Lawnchair. Problem is, there is no proper release bc there is not enough manpower to develop it.
You only need one shitty device that has “30 to 50 steps” to say “getting users to switch from Google was complicated, requiring as many as 30 to 50 steps”.
I have a Pixel. The Pixel Launcher that comes stock on the phone has a Google search thing that is not removable except via switching to another launcher. It looks like a widget, but you can’t remove it. It exists on every “panel” of the screen, below the app shortcuts.
I do use it quite a bit when making searches, but only because it’s there already and can’t be removed. If I could remove it, I would.
Nope. The pixel phones have a Google widget on the homescreen that cannot be removed.
I have a pixel and it would be those steps +
Open Google play, find a launcher, find a new search provider. Set new launcher as default, insert new search provider widget. Probably missed a few steps.
Yeah, that was my experience as well as a Pixel user. That said, it didn’t take too long to just finally switch to Firefox, Nova launcher, and Duck Duck Go. Mostly painless, and I’m over 40 👴
I’ve been using Niagara on my pixel 7. It takes a bit to get used to, but is so much cleaner. Add that with a browser other than chrome, and duckduckgo. Works pretty well.
If I hold down the home button on my phone, it launches the stupid Google Voice Search thing. Try as I might, I can’t find any way to remap that function.
For each browser on your phone* for the default on your phone*
I have 3 browsers on my phone for various stuff. If each is 5 steps, that’s 20 steps just to change them on my phone alone. People have multiple phones, multiple tablets, multiple computers…….
Interesting, I’m using an s20fe for around 3 years now, and haven’t had it happen once, was using an a50 before that, and don’t remember it happening there either
Yeah, what the fuck is that number? Are we just straight up lying in court now?
I decided to see how long it would take me to find out how to change it with no help. Took about 30 seconds. In mobile Chrome, it’s basically the first setting on the settings page. So the steps are (1) open chrome, (2) hamburger menu, (3) settings, (4) search engine. Even if I have to count turning my phone on and opening Chrome if it wasn’t on my home page, it still wouldn’t even add up to 10 steps.
I checked Firefox and it has one extra step. There’s still a search option literally at the top of the settings, just it goes to a page with multiple search related options (default search engine is still at the top). The fact that it worded it as “default” also made me immediately realize you can tap the Google icon in the address bar to choose another option, which must be what you used. 2 steps in that case.
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