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Comment by zxyzzxxx | Hacker News Reader

For most people it is just search and email. Replacing email is easy, but search is harder since only Google has really accurate and relevant results( besides other giants that also snoop ). The best way to replace search is to use engines that respect privacy and if you need relevant results, those that convey Google's results to you.

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For me it's waaay more than just that. Email, search, stock Android, DNS, browser, texts, phone calls, GPS, calendar, tasks, file storage, music, stocks, and certainly more that I'm forgetting.

The most absurd bit is that, since I use stock Android, Google knows exactly what I've installed and even monitored my behavior while using their app store, and yet I get so irked by Twitter getting a list too. It's like I've completely forgotten that I've already thrown away my privacy.

You can always start collecting it back.

Search is the easier: DDG. I've been using it all-but-exclusively for nearly three years solid (and another couple on-and-off before). I do still make use of some Google special collections (Scholar, Books), and for time-bound searches (really wish DDG would support those).

Email took me a while longer to sort, but while I have a primary personal account somewhere safe, anonymous / pseudonymous accounts were harder to provision. Yahoo and Microsoft both throw barriers (phone confirmation required) in the way. I ended up with an inbox.com account, like that.

The main feature I'm missing from DDG is the ability to filter results by date. I end up going to google often without it.

DDG is the fastest of all the privacy-respecting engines, but it consistently gives me the least accurate results. It works if you search for mainstream keywords, otherwise it mostly doesn't.

Google's strength lies in (and always has been in) the tail and ambiguous queries. Everyone can get the query "facebook" right; try the query "how to disassemble tile" on Google[1] and Yahoo[2] or Bing[3]. Google knows the difference between "tile" (the gadget) and "tiles".

[1] https://www.google.com/#safe=off&q=how+to+disassemble+tile

[2] https://search.yahoo.com/search?p=how+to+disassemble+tile&fr...

[3] http://www.bing.com/search?q=how+to+disassemble+tile

Interesting example. The results for ddg improve dramatically if you add "tracker" ("tile tracker"). I'm not sure I'd consider Google's default results better -- but then I don't own a "Tile". I do get that inferring that the connection "disasemble tile" implies something other than ceramic tiles (as opposed to "repair tile" -- here ddg and google are very similar for "repair tile" and "repair tile tracker" -- although none seem to give a result for software/a device to track progress of repairing ceramic tiles...).

I use it for all manner of searches. Knowing how to tune a search appropriately helps. Tossing in an additional keyword, or a set of associations can help:

    (phrase one| phrase two|phrase three)

Using bang syntax is also quite useful.

In my experience, where a DDG search doesn't turn up good results, an SP or Google search (both bang-searchable) are generally not much better. I'll revise my terms at that point.

Again, date-range is the notable exception, and it's not a minor issue.

I really like using https://swisscows.ch their search results are quite good and they respect my privacy.

EDIT: https://swisscows.ch/agreement

Replacing email should be easy, but a surprising number of people, even tech people (which makes no sense at all as they should know better), not only use Gmail for their email storage but also for their email address, and so can never entirely extricate themselves from Gmail.

Use https://search.disconnect.me/ .

You can use Bing, DuckDuckgo, Google or Yahoo as the search engine. "We don’t collect any of your personal info, including your IP address, other than information you voluntarily provide." See https://disconnect.me/privacy .

If too many people use this site, Google (and probably others too) will ban the IP.

I doubt it. Even if Google can't use the data they're getting from searches done via that service to target ads to specific people, they're still getting valuable data on what people search for generally.

I've been using qwant with pretty good results lately.

Still a bit hit and miss but getting better every day.

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