I stopped using Google at the same time I closed my accounts with Facebook, instagram, Reddit and Amazon. Currently I’m using Ecosia which I think is German. I’m dumping all the US companies I can based on all the Trump crap. It is taking time and effort but I should be able to actually close the Google account soon and I replaced windows with Linux on all but one of my PCs.
Ecosia still uses American services though - they use Google, Bing, Yahoo and Wikipedia for search results.
Yeah but don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Among other things, they just recently announced that they’re starting to build an alternative index with Qwant.
I’m using Qwant, used Ecosia before. Really OK for most stuff. I still revert to googling occasionally - mainly for local businesses on maps and sometimes shopping results. But I agree, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good, well said.
Google maps is still the best for looking up local businesses and reviews. I wish people would go back to using a modern version of yellow pages.
In Ecosia’s settings you can set it to primarily use Google results instead of Bing. Makes it a lot more enjoyable to use.
You’re right but it’s still important to point out in this case since an American index would be subject to any American censorship law. It’s better to use Ecosia than Google for sure but we still gotta be aware of the type of bias we’re working with.
Definitely true. I’ll have to try it out. Is Ecosia better than DuckDuckGo or Kagi?
Late to reply but: from what I heard, Kagi is really good at search (at least when it comes to filters and the such, not sure about base results), but it’s paid so that’s a disadvantage (and also a plus since you don’t get ads nor is your data being sold off), and it’s US based. DuckDuckGo also uses Bing but I guess they have more sources than just them. In my experience it’s about the same, maybe a bit better on DDG, both have shebangs (! for DDG, # for Ecosia) which I find extremely useful.
I’ve never heard of Ecosia, but I don’t understand your logic on this.
Problem: Google bad!
Solution: Don’t use google, use Ecosia instead.
Error: Ecosia also uses google.
How is this a good move? If anything it’s just a lateral move with the same problem.
Late reply but: Ecosia lets you choose between Google or Bing, but I guess that isn’t really your point. The main thing is it anonymises your searches, so you do get some additional privacy. Additionally, the hope is that one day they build their own index. They just recently announced that they’re gonna start one with Qwant.
Eventually they’ll stop using G and MAYBE they have better impact in the climate. Why be a fucking prick about it?
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What about DuckDuckGo?
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At this point Bing is better than Google, so using a privacy based skin of Bing seems like a good idea.
95+% of all websites you visit are hosted on AWS or use Cloudflare.
But that’s their decision, not yours.Do you have a source for that? I think it’s nowhere near 95% of sites given there’s several major providers that aren’t AWS or Cloudflare (eg Hetzner, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, Wordpress.com, and a bunch more)
ecosia is developing their own engine apparently
I hope that goes well for them. It’s hard and extremely expensive, which is why there’s so few good search engines and half of them just use Bing’s API.
Same here! Loved the switch to Linux.
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I wouldn’t say dogshit, I would say the results are good enough for most purposes, not great, my priority just as the moment is dumping USA based companies and I thought Ecosia planting trees was a nice touch. Although as someone else pointed out it is still possibly using crawlers from google and bing in the background. I’m still keen to try out other search engines.
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I switched when the answers I got started to become bullshit. I’d google a simple question just to double check if it was correct, but it gave me something completely different. Something so out of the realm of possibility that I was baffled.
I check the sources for the answer and they were not even related. After that I started paying more attention to how messed up google had become, and I had enough.
Google scholar however is still something I need… even though I dislike American corporations.
It’s kind of unreal that they took something that worked perfectly well for 25 years and then fucked it up entirely overnight, for no good reason.
Stick in bike spokes meme.
They did that to drive up short term ad revenue and it worked, and joy was in their greedy little hearts. They also did figure out that poisoning search results drives away users, and that search is kinda the fastest gateway drug to their entire ecosystem.
But they’re stuck. Fixing search would lower their ad revenue, and stock holders would kill them for that.
Also, the way SEO is gamed, it’s really hard to unenshittify the internet. It’s not just their ads, it’s everyone making fake bullshit that pulls the right levers to get to the top of a search.
and the nature of their 1000s of experiments going at the same time isn’t methodical at all. they don’t actually know what iteration of google search was the best and most useful one. there’s no going back to what worked because at no point did they ever know what worked. the modern shitty google search is the best version we will ever get to use again.
google embedded them as a core piece of information infrastructure and then demolished themselves. now our information networks fundamentally do not work anymore
I’m not going to defend google, but it’s important to understand the nature of the beast. It’s not possible to simply revert back to an older version of search ranking because it is a constant cat-and-mouse game between google developers and malicious actors trying to game the system with their shitty websites.
Enshitification.
Why would I google something when the first answer is an inferior AI to chatgpt. I’ll just use a better AI.
Who knew if your product was mostly shit people would stop using it?
77% still using it though
This might be very non-linear, like ice breaking under your feet.
Sure, but this is a process that takes time; that said, he trend is downward and that will likely continue unless things improve.
And if tech people are no longer recommending it, or actively recommending against it, it is possible to get people to start switching. This is largely how chrome became so popular in the first place, and that required getting people to change from the default option.
The recent duckduckgo ad campaign will surely help rescue googlers and so does my mission to ensure everyone I know doesn’t use google search.
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Google’s been garbage for years now, I kind of miss Copernic Pro which is what I used before Google it searched all the search engines available and combined and resorted all the results.
Google was perfect at launch but in recent years it’s worse than Yahoo!.
If you’re tech savvy, look into selfhosting SearXNG.
I think there are public instances as well.
Would it run on a Raspberry pi 5?
Yeah it doesn’t use many resources.
I’m running one on pi5 with no issue. It takes less than 5 minutes to install one under docker.
No effing way! I got a 16gb model, doing this right………now.
I abandoned Google when they started throwing shopping links at the top of every search, even when searching for things that have no relevance to shopping, and they started artificially promoting scams and paid material above actual results.
Google Search was best around 10-15 years ago when their only focus was providing the best results they could (remember when you could actually click the top result and you would be taken to the most applicable page instead of some unrelated ad or scam?). Now their focus is on providing the best product possible for their actual customers (paid advertisers) even when it means trashing their own product in the process.
15+ years ago you could search for an error code, or an error message, or a part number and actually find it.
they also ruined their own platform by creating and encouraging an entire business around gaming search results.
I’m glad to contribute to that metric.
Been using Ecosia for up to a year now probably. I like it and I don’t need anything else.
Is Ecosia any good for the privacy-minded folks among us?
It’s more privacy focussed than Google, but less than others. Personally I use Ecosia at work and Qwant at home.
For a growing number of users, we can provide search results and ads from Google. For the eligible users, we will provide Google results by default. When your search results and ads are provided by Google, Google will use essential cookies and local storage to help defend against fraudulent traffic. Beyond this, the cookies Google uses will depend on where you are searching from: If you search from the EU, UK or certain US states (for example California), Google will not set additional cookies without your consent. If you search from elsewhere, Google may place additional cookies and the functionality of these cookies will depend on whether you have a Google account
Seems like using Ecosia is about as private as using Google directly.
I still include Google results in my Searx.
Definitely miss the good ol’ days where it was optimized to give the best results. Same goes for Netflix recommendations back in the the DVD mailer days…
!lemmysilver
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Consider Kagi far superior.
I ditched Google and Gmail.
Best AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google - included in one $25/mo subscription with our Ultimate plan.
Same trash.
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Privacy company offers privacy focused LLMs for users that would’ve otherwise paid for ChatGPT. Unbelievable
Did you actually ever try Kagi or do you just want to spit uninformed delusions?
Those LLMs can never be privacy focused when they are still trained in stolen data, stolen art, stolen research and stolen models.
Every. Single. One.
You are confusing morality and copyright with user privacy.
You also failed to access if you’ve actually tried the search engine that you are no quick to spit nonsense about.
Ok so what’s your alternative then?
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I ended up having to install a CalDAV client on my other people’s Android phone.
Nice to see this choice is making an actual difference.
I ditched it around 2014 when I noticed it had effectively become the yellow pages. Its pretending to be one thing to the ‘user’ when its actually serving someone else. This is transparent of course but the balance/compromise or tradeoff of it still providing some utility to the user despite this is what may vary for different people. My threshold was low. That and the privacy violations. Unfortunately its a corporation.
Didn’t read the article but use Qwant since Trump.
Or Ecosia
Ditched Google for DuckDuckGo in like 2019 and used that for a long time until Kagi came out and now I use that and I’m quite happy with it.
