Google Alternatives
justprivacy.org
justprivacy.org
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 what you're looking for.
I can live without chrome, calendars, gmail, maps and all the others. But they're still the best at search by a lot.
That said, in general DDG results seems to be improving incrementally, while I can’t say the same for Google.
There is one feature that google has which I can't find a good alternative for: Reverse search of images. Hands down, that's a good one, Google.
Let's try something new: Let's give examples. I'll go first:
Let's say I have a nebulous recollection that there is a wifi module with "NRF" in the model number. If I search for `nrf wifi` on both Google and DDG, which do you think provides better results?
Let's look at the top URL hits from both (this is in an incognito window, with ublock origin on!):
Google:
1) nordicsemi.com (the manufacturer) homepage
2) <manufacturer website> press release
3) <manufacturer website> random Q & A page
4) arduino.stackoverflow.com (question about how to use it)
5) Some blog (someone's guide to using it)
6) nrf.com (National Retail Federation) conference category: wifi and bluetooth analytics (unrelated result, but I can imagine someone going to this conference might google the exact same thing, good thing Google knows to show it...
--- A random box showing questions relevant to the device ---
7) arduino.cc (question about how to use it)
8) <electronics blog site A> (someone's guide to using it)
9) <electronics blog site A> (another page on using it)
10) <electronic parts retail site A> (sells it)
DDG:
1) <electronics blog site A> (someone's guide to using it)
2) <electronics blog site B> (someone's guide to using it)
3) <electronic parts retail site C> (someone's guide to using it)
4) <electronics blog site D> (someone's guide to using it)
5) <electronics blog site E> (someone's guide to using it)
6) <electronics blog site F> (another guide to using it)
7) <electronics blog site G> (someone's guide to using it)
8) arduino.cc (question about how to use it)
9) <manufacturer website> random Q & A page
10) <manufacturer website> another random Q & A page
As you can see, Google seems to prefer authoritative sources (the manufacturer, the conference that coincidentally has the same name and category), while DDG seems to prefer blogs and how-to guides. I won't say which is better, that's entirely subjective.
DDG: /r/conspiracy at the top of the list - first result
Google: nowhere to be seen
Makes me wonder what else they are not showing.
OTOH I can confirm Google did not show /r/donaldtrump in the first page for "reddit donald trump" (no quotes), while it's the first result on DDG.
Again first result on DDG, no result on Google.
It's a bit more than "towards the right" IMHO. I don't mind this reddit community being ignored by Google Search.
Google: No reddit entry, with "The_Donald" entry from Wikipedia
DDG: /r/donaldtrump, /r/donald_trump, /r/AskTrumpSupporters as first 3 results.
Try 'biden reddit'
"reddit sorcery of the spectacle" works, for example.
However "reddit married red pill" doesn't (works on DDG).
There must be some kind of censoring going on. Maybe Donald Trump and Biden are somehow influenced by elections. But this wouldn't explain the others.
A simple keyword match, even if weighted, is no longer enough. The engine needs to grok the context of a query. Chances of someone's using a generic query to find a blog instead of a vendor's site are basically zero.
Maybe better: Let's make (or find) a benchmark for web search.
I try to continue to work at it until I get a result I’m looking for in the hopes that it helps improve the search results for myself and others.
I can say that the ddg results today are good enough that I can actually use it as my default, but this was not true several years ago.
What Google has done is to prioritize mainstream sources over correct matches. In the old days you could get a match for small unknown blog on the first page, today it is very rare for me that I get that. It is usually mainstream sources on the first page, except when the search is very technical like programming.
This becomes even more apparent for Google’s affiliate YouTube where you can search for the exact title and it doesn’t show up on the first page. Related videos is also broken.
What drives clicks on YouTube today is the very curated home page for a user. This was not how YouTube used to work.
These factors has changed how we, at least for me, consume content. In the old days you found small independent sources much more easily, which meant that it was up to you to make a judgment if that source was interesting or not. Today it is the opposite, "here is a clip that has been viewed 20 millions times before you, enjoy!". This has made the web much worse.
One thing that Google do better is grouping result from same source, like here is all matches from Reddit, this has two main benefits. First it easy to view that group separately. Second is that you can view more matches on the first search page.
This seems trivial compared to solving the search problem. I wonder if something like this is on DDG’s roadmap.
This seems trivial compared to the search problem. I wonder if something like this is on DDG’s roadmap.
I'm a little bit surprised that http://startpage.com isn't on the list, it's anonymized google in the same way ddg is anonymized bing.
Not necessarily a bad thing, but I have zero trust that these new owners will not succumb to some common and oh-so-effective shenanigans to improve their ad performance in the StartPage search results. That's like selling a rehab facility to a drug cartel. A match made in heaven.
I tried to use DDG for a whole year only to realize I was constantly typing !g
Also, I don't live on Windows, which limits the amount of my data MS can get its hands on.
People already know/feel that when Google states that it will not do something with people’s information but it does not say what it does... well, that doesn’t feel very comfortable. In fact, it’s so uncomfortable, that people avoid asking what does Google do with that not logged or not for advertising data. On mobile, being the only alternative a device that costs about 5 months of my work, I may not what to know the answer for that questions too and just hope for the best
Occasionally I still have to scroll down to click "Search on Google". I wish that link would be in the page top rather than bottom, especially for the picture search (where it is almost impossible to click as more results get shown as soon as you scroll down). It would also be cool if they would add a link to search with the local country-specific search engine (i.e. zoznam.sk, seznam.cz, yandex.ru etc.) for those located in respective countries.
Before, I was getting proper localized results. Even searching in Japan with English keywords gave me Japanese results.
Nowadays when I search even for simple things it does not work. If I look for "dominos pizza" in Japan, I get:
dominos.com
allmenuprice.com
dominosaruba.com
dominospanama.com
dominos.ca
dominos.com.au
dominos.co.in
dominos.co.nz
...
And it goes on and on with multiples pages, but I have to go to Google to actually get dominos.jp
This works rather well with DDG (I've been a happy DDG user for many years now).
On the other hand, I understand that I'm probably a minority in this, most people just want their search engine to essentially read their minds and they do not want to think about it too much.
P.S. - I realize even DxOMark scores and ranks may be disputed, but that's still one (close to objective) index and it's used just as an example here.
In the end it is all about having good search engine options.
What I don't like about DDG is that they use bing. Hope they start using their own search now that they are getting big.
I dont' trust MS as much as I don't trust google.
I believe you, I'm just saying that's not my experience at all.
Meanwhile, I struggle to give up GDocs and remind myself to use Zoho instead.
Google is good at finding very specific error messages and other strings.
I have a theory: Technically Google is better but the search results suffer from every marketer and publisher trying to game the system.
This feature would make me switch to DDG.
(I tried DDG, but got tired from typing "!g")
Besides, a userscript that does what you want could be written very easily I guess.
Perhaps, but here I am: a potential DDG user who is instead using Google because of this missing feature.
They could of course put a nice privacy warning next to the Google button. Or they could label it "!g" to avoid using Google's name.
> Besides, a userscript that does what you want could be written very easily I guess.
I thought of making a "!g" bookmarklet, but I wouldn't know how to deploy it on mobile (Firefox).
that opens google search
The past few years, I'm sure I've wasted a lot of time searching on the net, looking for relevant articles while Google spouts out BS.
Their own Sources page makes this distinction more clear:
"To do that, DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from multiple partners, though most commonly from Bing (and none from Google)."
https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...
* "Google search is malicious, send the same data to Russia with Yandex instead."
* Apparently Google Chrome is a search engine.
* "Google doesn’t care about users’ privacy that much. It collects your data and uses it for their own purposes." Might just be me, but this reads like a throwaway essay written by an 8th grader.
* The site uses Google Analytics.
Despite the clear lack of quality in this article, it seems like this type of post does well on HN simply because "Google == bad" is such low-hanging fruit.
To be clear, it's definitely not at all better in any meaningful sense for Google/the US government to have your data. But sometimes it's about the principle of the thing.
However if you distrust your own government it makes little sense to put all your data eggs in their basket.
I don't understand where principles come into it. Privacy is about risk avoidance.
Absolutely. It is much less of an issue here than on, say, Reddit. But lots of people upvote posts because it sounds interesting, not because they have gone through it and determined it to be high quality.
Don't trust them
1/ Google Search, YouTube, Maps: visit https://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols to turn on auto-deletion or turn off search history, location history or YouTube watch history. This page also allows you to turn off ads personalization. There are many security and privacy controls on https://myaccount.google.com/, turn them on however you see fit.
2/ Chrome: visit chrome://settings/syncSetup to turn off Chromesync, disallow Chrome sign-in, disable automcomplete searches and URLs, etc. You can also change the default search engine to something else, but see point 1/ if you want to use Google Search. Use Incognito mode more often.
3/ Gmail, Photos, Calendar, Drive, Docs: "we don’t use information in apps where you primarily store personal content—such as Gmail, Drive, Calendar and Photos—for advertising purposes, period." [1] In other words, Gmail, YouTube or Search ads are not targeted or personalized using your emails, photos, events, docs, etc.
Disclosure: I'm a Google's security engineer, advocating for and contributing to some of the aforementioned security/privacy controls.
[1] https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/keeping-priva...
I switched from Firefox to Ungoogled Chromium after a long time because of atrocious UI/UX on macOS. However I am stuck with Google pushing Manifest v3
An even better test:
- get an Android device (say, a OnePlus 6T)
- create some contacts on the phone, and add a few events in the default calendar
- open the Play Store (required to get many of the most popular apps)
- you're required to logged into a Google account
- log in and try to not have your contacts and calendar events uploaded to Google's servers.
That is not possible, because
1. you must be connected to the Internet in order to log into a Google account (obvious)
2. Google does not let you enable or disable the sync for a particular item before starting uploading everything
3. Google will enable the sync for all possible items (starting w/ contacts) in the background, and you cannot switch screens fast enough to prevent that.
This must have been the default for most Android devices for a decade now. They keep collecting billions contacts details without users' explicit consent, which is 100% illegal.
Things like this are why I tolerate all the bugs on the pinephone.
Source?
Facebook has used phone numbers given exclusively for 2FA purposes for targeted advertising and got away with merely a slap on the wrist considering their revenue.
Facebook also collected data for years from their trackers but only relatively recently started exposing that to users (with their "Off-Facebook activity" page), which means that for 2 years they were in breach of the GDPR by not allowing people access to their own data and incriminated themselves (by now providing that webpage which proves they've collected this data for years). They are yet to be investigated & fined for this.
GDPR and privacy regulation enforcement is still a complete joke.
" Google and its partners have access to all your information and they can collect data, they can display ads inside your inbox, and the contents of your inbox are shared with random third parties. "
the proof they link to is an article about cases where the gmail-user gave permission to those third-party apps to read their gmail-email. so, no "random third parties", no "partners". if you remove those parts from the argument, what remains is an email provider that also displays ads next to your email.
Godaddy is offered as a domain and website host, when they have been known to inject JavaScript tracking code unbeknownst to the user [0].
[0] https://www.igorkromin.net/index.php/2019/01/13/godaddy-is-s...
There's also so much SEO-spam on Google/Bing that I find it easier to just do site:reddit.com or look up the top rated posts/comments on HN from Algolia. The latter works really well, so thank you all committed HN users! :)
There is a plan to extend custom search engines with that functionality, but it is not clear if it can be a full replacement.
I tried to find a link to the discussion where Mozilla took this decision, but apparently the decision process at Mozilla is not very open, or it’s documentation is scattered among too many systems.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G65IlLQqooUnRFtrzi-FU79M...
From that it looks like bookmark keyword searches will be auto-migrated to a new user interface in about:preferences that will allow users to create their own "custom search engine", which seems to imply it will have all the features necessary to do what bookmark keyword searches can currently do. Without knowing anything about this change prior to reading your comment, on the surface this seems like a good thing to me since it sounds like it will be a lot more discoverable and usable to your average user than bookmark keyword searches currently are.
Disclosure: I'm a Mozilla developer.
the only thing stopping me from going back to vivaldi at this point if the containers feature
I actually rather like having my search history available to me, along with my location history, and my YouTube watch history. But, like many folks, I'm wary of this information being shared with others without my consent (or when my consent is non-optional).
Is there a better solution for looking up my own search history than syncing my Firefox history across multiple devices and querying the URLs directly? Is there a good Android app for automatically storing my lat/long, mapping this to nearby locations from OSM, and syncing it to, say, a simple self-hosted database? Or possibly a good tool for syncing YouTube (or, better, all video) view histories across multiple devices like TVs and phones without logging in? None of these things seems like it is overly technically challenging, but it feels like a hole in some of the Google alternatives list I've seen.
I am still using it, because I think that Google services are generally highly secure (in terms of theft/hacks/breaches/etc), although they might not be the safest in terms of encryption.
However, I am using it with Cryptomator[0]. What this tool does it to encrypt your data/files/etc and store them in the chosen cloud. It's quite convenient, if you have several devices. I highly recommend it.
If you want to use Cryptomator, please check if your cloud storage provider supports WebDAV, otherwise not every feature will work, like android or so.
You can also use this idea with something like KeepassXC so that you can have a password manager in the cloud without having to pay.
>Google fonts
>Cloudflare
justprivacy.org
Have a look at the source of justprivacy.org, and you'll see the above 3 products being used. Clearly they're not dog-fooding their own rhetoric.
But this site is not amongst those.
edit: nvm, it's cloudflare's SSL cert
Really? I don't anything about Edge, but what serious privacy issues does Safari have? It doesn't send data back to Apple as far as I can tell. I can use ad blockers and tracker blockers with it. Or when they say "some of these" do they mean "one of these two?"
End-to-End encrypted data section: Safari History and iCloud Tabs (requires iOS 13 or later)
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.
It's a fantastic service. Offers webdav storage, calendar, contacts, notes, and more. I really like that you can also use sieve[1] for filtering your email.
JMAP[2] is really cool too, the documentation on it is quite great. It makes me want to do some cool things with it, like Julia Evans[3].
[1]: http://sieve.info/ [2]: https://jmap.io/ [3]: https://jvns.ca/blog/2020/08/18/implementing--focus-and-repl...
There are only two things I hope they will fix:
- the android app works only when there is an internet connection running (...)
- they should provide a family account, because I am not gonna pay for my wife or kids' accounts for 10 emails a month or so.
With my biases, I remember that Google search was pretty good by 2005 (and much more predictable and configurable than nowadays). Why is there almost no competition and innovation in this space, apart from rebranding Bing search as Duck Duck Go?
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...
As for "far too valuable of a piece of real estate"... I feel like that's an unimaginative view trapped in the commercial state that we're in. Perhaps if Google had beat Wikipedia to online encyclopedias, but had pumped theirs with ads, we'd be saying the same thing about the far too valuable real estate of online information.
(Google has deliberately slanted their news results towards mainstream sources in an attempt to suppress political messaging that they consider unacceptable, but it's not clear whether this is having an impact on the specific problem of commercial results drowning out other sources.)
This isn't quite true. Google has changed its search results in recent years to cut out content from more than a decade or so ago. You can no longer find the content even if you search for the exact strings in the website. If you have your own old site, it is easy to see from the logs that the Google Bot is still crawling the old pages, it just doesn't index them any more.
There are many instances where the most relevant content to return for a search would be from a website from the early millennium, but Google refuses to show that, while Google will show a big commercial website from more recent times even if the result is less relevant to the query.
almonit.eth.link/
Almonit is based on IPFS and it would actually be interesting to make a real Google alternative based on the idea of IPFS.
Take a look at Posteo.de (if you’re fine with no support for custom domains) and mailbox.org and runbox.com if you want custom domain support.
If you’re fine with the provider being in the U.S. and want a cheap solution for multiple domains, then mxroute may be good. It also has some very cheap plans and offers going on (check the lowendtalk.com forums).
Their email interface may not be great, but I download using IMAP anyway. And you could install your own preferred web interface on the shared hosting you'll have.
If you just need the basics: Email addresses, with stuff like SMTP and IMAP support, Dreamhost is more than adequate.
Edit: I only use 1 email account with them though, don't know how they go for multiple.
Pushes straight to Apple Mail on iPhone/iPad etc
The new paid tier is ~$1.6 monthly or about 5 cents a day, which is affordable in every corner of the planet. We also never refused to help those that by some chance cannot afford it.
Also, the lowest paid tier has limitations whereas the next tier after that is a huge jump in price.
For these reasons, I cannot consider Migadu as a trustworthy provider right now.
The notice was actually given in early August, and the change took effect in October. We have extended trial to all that asked for it without problems. We did say in the update what happened.
The lowest paid plan has only limitations in tools for multi-admin, everything else is the same with lower quota obviously, but that is already double what was on the free plan.
All good, just that has nothing to do with trust. Trust works both ways. There is no such thing as free lunch, and we have always called the "free" plan "unlimited trial" with clear statement that we can revoke it at anytime.
just dont post personal data to the internet and dont search for illegal stuff with your actual account
Sure, you do you, nothing wrong with that. I'd rather use 'inferior' technology if that means better privacy standards.
If you have any specific concerns, I'd love to learn more and see if there's anything I can help.
This made me laugh. Let's talk about an example. Imagine the nicest house with all of the features possible. You get to live in the house and enjoy all benefits at not cost whatsoever. Only catch would be that the house would be made of transparent glass and everyone outside gets to see what you are doing at all times. Would you still choose to live in the house? Sure you might, I for one will not because it would make me extremely uncomfortable. It might not directly make me worse off but tracking my every move does not sit right with me.
Using google's service is somewhat like that transparent house except whatever you do on web is tracked, profiled and used against your best interests.
In general, punish a monopoly by using a competitor, not by boycotting the monopoly. You're supporting an eventual threat to the monopoly, which monopolists hate, because it erodes their long-term advantage. That's why they spend so much buying up small competitors. They're afraid.
Doing yourself the injury of avoiding the monopoly platform completely is something they would do to punish you if they could, to discourage others from patronizing competitors.