Ditching Google for a week | Hacker News Reader

Ditching Google for a week

slate.com

21 pointsJacobAldridge27 comments

This is the most important part of the article ...

For one thing, despite Bing’s better design, Google is unquestionably the better search engine. Of the hundreds of searches I conducted in the last week, there were a handful of times that Bing just didn’t seem to be giving me the answer I was looking for.

Indeed, it's peculiar how bad Bing is at times. With a Windows Phone in family, I occasionally hit the dedicated Bing-button to quickly search for something only to realize that I'd find the thing I was looking for much faster if I just used browser, typed google.com and then searched. That always reminds me how bad web search was before Google.

I don't think Microsoft is competing to have the best search results. As long as it gives somewhat ok results for standard queries that's fine for them, from a business standpoint of view.

I pretty much use duckduckgo as my main search site now. Though I still use google for some queries each day, I don't feel as reliant on google as before.

"The great thing about Chrome is that it remembers your preferences across all your computers—I only needed to switch to Bing on my desktop, and there it was on my laptop, too. (Thank you, Google!)"

Did the OP get it at all? That's one of the reasons to ditch Google. Collecting data, no privacy, down to the tiniest details....

Aren't sync items encrypted at the browser level? I thought they were...

They are, with your Google Account password by default, and if you want to be extra cautious, with a different passphrase.

> That's one of the reasons to ditch Google. Collecting data, no privacy, down to the tiniest details....

I don't think THIS is an example of privacy invasion at any level. In fact this is an example that shows that not all data collection is, excuse me for my abuse of the phrase, _evil_. All these browsers are provided by Google, the user is free to not associate Google accounts with them - they work really well even without them. There is no major loss of utility if you don't. Installing a third party addon to sync bookmarks across varies installations (as I used to do in FF) is trickier, wasteful and unnecessary.

If I have to browse something that I don't want Google to know or associate persistently to my account, I use Incognito Window. It works really well for the purpose it was designed for.

> Did the OP get it at all?

May be you are right, Google is a company that deserves no respect and no users; but when you phrase your sentiments that way, you basically call the other person an idiot who cannot understand even a bit of the most easiest of concepts. And when someone like me, who shares the same views as the OP, reads these opinions we are alienated. Just like you swayed from a largely-neutral position to make your point, we sway even more to counterbalance and what we get eventually is a flamewar. And no I don't get it and may be I won't (probably the OP would feel the same way). I infer that I respect my privacy much less than you do to yours and mine. So even if this was a legit case poor privacy practice on Google's part, but if I (and the OP) feels that it isn't than either you should respect my (and OP's) opinion or give a little more verbose explanation while assuming I will be educated enough to read and understand your opinion.

I'm pretty sure that was a joke.

I contemplated ditching Google search for a week (or two). So many people here seem to think it is getting worse and I wanted to try and understand that perspective.

Unfortunately, I quickly ran into a deal-breaker for me: no search plugin for my default mobile browser (Firefox on Android). I found that strange given that Firefox and Bing have been quite friendly at times, but there it is.

I did try the Bing search app on Android before giving up. I wasn't impressed with the app (it tried too hard to be your browser/environment rather than just a search utility) or with its search capabilities (it seemed to do a pretty bad job of using my location information with my search, for example).

Someone who sees Google Instant as a feature. Interesting, I can't disable it quickly enough.

I find Instant useful. But sometimes I want to track back to the Google search page with my exact used word search to try another search result, but, Alas!, it is not in the browser history. Because I clicked an instant link.

"If you’re never really going to escape Google—and if Bing is pretty much exactly like Google—what’s the point?"

From my perspective, there still is a point doing so - enhance privacy by feeding less personal data to Google. I still use Google search when necessary, but I also use DDG, Bing and startpage.com.

I also use some of the Google services, like for example Reader, which is a superior product far ahead of any competition, but I stopped using some of their other services like Gmail, G+, Bookmarks, etc.

So while ditching Google completely is currently inpractical, reducing its usage is still justifiable thing to do.

I ditched Google for DDG a few months ago. Haven't looked back!

Me too. Good bye Google!

!g yeah, goodbye and hello google.

My experience exactly. I switch completely over to DDG, and ended up switching back after I realised I was starting so many queries with !g it made no sense at all.

Can you please give some examples of queries that aren't working for you? https://duckduckgo.com/feedback.html That will really help us improve.

"Best search engine" https://duckduckgo.com/?q=best+search+engine

No where on that list is Duck Duck go. Obviously that query is not working well. I was expecting an easter egg javascript game of some sort. Or a clever witticism on how cool ducks are. But alas...

You don't get the same "quality" of answers from DDG. That's by design. Since Google tracks your searches, you always get what Google thinks you prefer, or what Google knows makes most benefit for them. If you use DDG this is different. Thats the whole point about it IMHO.

With DDG, if I am not sloppy and really try to find the best search string, I usually get my answers on page one. Not as the first item though. This only shows that the net is much more diverse than big G makes it look like.

On the contrary, I consider "personalised" search results to be of lower quality.

* The great thing about Chrome is that it remembers your preferences across all your computers—I only needed to switch to Bing on my desktop, and there it was on my laptop, too. (Thank you, Google!)*

Which is done by storing your preferences on ... Google

Try duckduckgo.com

It was created by one of our own here in hacker news.

One could also consider using a Google scraper like startpage.com.

I don't know why you was downmoded; I also use startpage, along with DDG, Bing and Google. Actually, it is technicaly not Google scraper, their results are different than Google's. I use them when I don't want to reveal my search string in the URL.

It's worth noting that slate.com use to be owned by Microsoft.

Spqr - very few people can read your comments. You've been hellbanned. In fact, I don't think your posts have ever been seen!

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