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Google has been about the same for me. I went from total Google fanboy to migrating a lot of my life away from them and advising others to do the same.
by servercobra 7y ago
Google has been about the same for me. I went from total Google fanboy to migrating a lot of my life away from them and advising others to do the same.
- mav3rick 7y agoNo non tech person is going to use Duck Duck Go.
- servercobra 7y agoI'm not even using Duck Duck Go. But that doesn't mean you need to use Gmail, Google Maps, Android, etc etc.
- wyre 7y agoI don't work in tech or do any programming and I use ddg.
- chiefgeek 7y agoWhy not? There is zero difference between it's interface and that of Google search.
- iamaelephant 7y agoBecause of the search results.
- int_19h 7y agoGoogle search results have been deteriorating in the past couple of years. It feels like the algorithm has been deliberately tweaked to produce larger quantities of less relevant results - it will often substitute words for "synonyms" that are much broader in scope, to the point of rendering the query pointless. I can't help but think that the purpose is to then show more "relevant" ads.
- QuinnWilton 7y agoEven so, the deteriorated results I get from Google tend to be better than what I get anywhere else. I have DDG set as my default engine, and frequently need to fallback on Google. I wish I could say DDG was as good or better, but outside of the privacy perspective, that unfortunately hasn't been my experience.
- FalconSensei 7y agoUnfortunately, there's no way DDG could compete with Google without any tracking/history as google has.
- ProZsolt 7y agoOnce I had great Google Fu. I could find really niche topics. Currently, it's completely useless for that. If it's not something that many people want to find, you cant find it.
- int_19h 7y agoYou can still pull it off, but it requires copious quoting to ensure no substitutions or removals from the query.
- wruza 7y agoReevaluating this statement yearly is a good practice for an enlightenment.
- ratww 7y agoAfter moving to Germany I met quite a few non-tech people who ditched Google for DDG: artists, musicians, accountants, translators.
- mav3rick 7y agoYou can still fallback to Google from the DDG UI
- fma 7y agoThinking about doing the same to diversify where my private info gets sucked up. Who do you use for email?
- lotsofpulp 7y agoI’m not the person you responded to, but I use fastmail and migadu.
- stilley2 7y ago+1 for fastmail
- x0x0 7y agoalso +1 for fastmail. (I say this as a longtime user, and this is not meant to be damning with faint praise). Their email is best of class outside of gmail. It even beats in certain ways: It syncs faster. It's not made by a surveillance company. As a paying user, I've gotten very competent tech support. They have very good privacy controls re: image loading. They seem to permanently grandfather rates, which is nice. Downsides: their label system is, to someone who really likes gmail, not as good. Calendar syncing on Android with their preferred sync app breaks every couple of months until you hit resync. Fastmail is in Australia, and I'm not sure the impact of Australia's police assistance laws. Same: They support u2f. Their product has improved a lot in the 5 years I've been using it, and is very worth the money. I think it's critically important that there exist high quality alternatives to google services, so that's a nice secondary reason to pay them.
- aerique 7y agoIn the case of Fastmail I don't know what you mean with "their preferred sync app" but I've used CalDAV-Sync in the past and now DAVx5 (because it's easier to use (used to be DAVdroid)) and I've never had these problems you mention.
- 7y ago