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Comment by emerged | Hacker News Reader

Google are the most literal incarnation of Big Brother I could possibly imagine at this point.

Really? I feel that Facebook (especially the Company as a whole, not just the facebook.com site) takes that place.

I don't use Facebook and I get by just fine. However, when I tried to switch to bing for a while, I could barely use the internet. Google is much worse than Facebook can ever hope to be.

There are alternatives, service-by-service.

Try startpage or duckduckgo for search. (The prior is essentially a proxy for Google).

Fastmail or protonmail to get away from GMail. One of the hard things about avoiding Google in email is that even if you switch, others you communicate are likely still there, so Google's still getting that information.

I tried switching to duckduckgo. It fell short comared to google on everything I gave it. I plan on trying again when I have less on my plate. We all know when that will be.

Interesting, I use DDG by default on all my devices and rarely ever miss Google. If I do, it's just a !g away.

Conversely, when I use google, I frequently miss !w (search on Wikipedia), !i (search images), !a (amazon) and other "bang" shortcuts.

You can achieve something similar to bang shortcuts by adding different search engines to your browser of choice and setting short keywords for them.

E.g., in Chrome: Settings > manage search engines > find Wikipedia > change the shortcut to "w."

Facebook is right on their heels

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