19 ms·

It's been 2-3 years since I switched back to Firefox ever since I cut around 90% of Google out of my life, sadly I still can't find a good search engine where I

It's been 2-3 years since I switched back to Firefox ever since I cut around 90% of Google out of my life, sadly I still can't find a good search engine where I don't spend more than 5 mins trying different keywords to get the results google gives me. Out of all the browsers I like that Mozilla were the first to point the finger to the elephant in the room while Microsoft, Google, Opera just turned a blind eye on privacy, although I don't think anyone expects much from Google these days. Firefox has once again became my default browser on all my devices after like 6-8 years since I last used it. I guess as far as privacy concerns goes, if you are looking for a company/browser that will continue working on protecting you from trackers by default that'd be Mozilla. Random observations that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the topic: Firefox for windows is perfect. I actually think it's faster on Windows than on OSX for whatever reason. Playing videos, like using Netflix or Youtube is extremely sluggish on Firefox OSX, but is fine on Windows. I always end up using Safari if I want to watch a video on a higher resolution because the performance drags a lot on Firefox, especially it Netflix's overlay UI you can literally observe it's lagging behind but not in Safari.

npsomaratna 7y ago
I switched to DuckDuckgo a few months ago, and never looked back. The results used to be far inferior to Google's - but they seem to have caught up recently. If you haven't tried them out within the last couple of months, I strongly recommend that you give them a chance.
- Pangia 7y ago
  I switched to DuckDuckGo a number of years ago and while yes, their results have become better there are times in my line of work where I've had to use !g search item as Google still seems have to have the best results sometimes. Granted this is maybe once or twice in 3 - 4 months I end up using !g prefix.
  - pixelrevision 7y ago
    Another helpful thing that can be done with Firefox is to add google.com to a container. One of the things google does that I really dislike is personalized search. Having a container specified for it lets me use the browser more naturally without having to open a private session.
    - monadic2 7y ago
      You can also configure firefox to never leave private mode—I can’t endorse this enough.
      - brigandish 7y ago
        Do you know if there's a way to get it to work with containers? Often, I'll use a container to remain logged in to a site and white list its cookies. It'd be good if non-container pages were in private mode by default.
  - testuser66 7y ago
    Have been using Ecosia and I have to do a `g` search pretty much daily. Though the use Bing underneath, so maybe it's worth giving DuckDuckGo a try
- king_magic 7y ago
  I switched to DuckDuckGo, made it maybe two weeks, and finally gave up and switched back to Google. Their search results are still vastly inferior to Google.
  - aembleton 7y ago
    Can you give an example search that doesn't work for you?
    - king_magic 7y ago
      No? I don't have a list handy, and I’m not the QA department for DDG. The point is - and yes, this is somewhat subjective - I found the quality of the results inferior to Google, and grudgingly switched back after a few weeks of disappointment.
      - dallbee 7y ago
        You're certainly not alone, but I've had such a wildly different experience. I switched to duckduckgo primarily because I preferred the search results. The privacy aspect was just a bonus. The only time I ever find myself using the !g escape hatch is when I'm searching something brand new (e.g. a breaking news story). Duckduckgo has a recency filter but it seems to take them a few days to ingest the content.
      - bestest 7y ago
        Same here. I'm still using duckduckgo on my private devices (phone and home laptop), at work I'm using google. I suppose the reason this works for me is at work I need GOOD results, thus google search there. At home I just need a search now and again, so duckduckgo is good enough for this. So, my private life stays my private life with duckduckgo. And at work — I don't really care what google does to my "js shortest path algorithm"-kind-of results history.
    - Tomte 7y ago
      From earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19043565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19043565
bad_user 7y ago
What I do is to use multiple search engines and specialize my searches. I use "smart keywords" [1], which work similarly to DuckDuckGo's !bangs [2] and most of the time I noticed that I know what the source I want is — if I want a Wikipedia article, I search with "@w" in front, if I'm searching for a dictionary definition, I search with a "@define", if I want to search for a location I search with "@maps", if I want a StackOverflow answer I search with "@so", etc, etc. I have bookmarks for such search engines, neatly being synchronized between my Firefox instances (works on mobile too) and I got quite used to them. I prefer my own bookmarks, b/c I can always add custom stuff and b/c I don't want an extra round trip to DDG anyway. Also DuckDuckGo is fine for English results, I often find that searches yielding bad results on DDG will often lead bad results on Google too. When not finding what I'm looking for, sometimes I search on Google too ("@g"), in order to double check. But you won't catch me searching for very personal stuff on Google — e.g. I'll never search for health advice on Google and even if DDG's results are bad, it's either that versus nothing at all. I'm also not super strict — we do use Gmail and Google Docs at work and that's fine, but I do prefer native clients for Gmail too and I prefer text files in my Dropbox for my own notes. I also pay for YouTube Premium, because otherwise my son is getting exposed to ads, plus I watch YouTube anyway and I'd rather have the ads-free experience on every device I own. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Smart%20keywords https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Smart%20keywords [2]: https://duckduckgo.com/bang https://duckduckgo.com/bang
- dannyw 7y ago
  > I still can't find a good search engine where I don't spend more than 5 mins trying different keywords to get the results google gives me.
  - bad_user 7y ago
    Right and the TL;DR of my reply is — if I spend 5 mins on DDG or other websites, then I would have spent 5 mins on Google too, because in my experience Google's search results have degraded too — due to spam, plus I noticed the results further degrading after I toggled off the search history in my profile, but that's another discussion.
- 7y ago
dleslie 7y ago
Search is a privacy vulnerability anyhow; the better it is the more information about yourself you must have surrendered. Before good search was available the use of bookmarks and bookmark sharing was far more widespread, and discovering new content was somewhat of a social experience.
Fnoord 7y ago
SearX works very well, as good as Google, according to this comparison (which is the reason I went from DDG go SearX). [1] https://libretechtips.gitlab.io/detailed-tests-of-search-engines-google-startpage-bing-duckduckgo-metager-ecosia-swisscows-searx-qwant-yandex-and-mojeek/ https://libretechtips.gitlab.io/detailed-tests-of-search-eng...
- DavideNL 7y ago
  But which instance? You have to trust the hoster of the instance, but there seems to be little info on that...
  - Fnoord 7y ago
    Great point. The SearX documentation addresses your concern here [1] I run my own, for myself only (via WireGuard). Its easy to set one up, for example with Docker [2]. However, I recommend to try it out first. A list of public instances is available here [3]. These lists include Tor entries (if you require anonimity, don't enable JS and use e.g. Tor Browser!), and also mention where they are hosted (if on clearweb). You can try it out there. That being said, one which seems safe (because of the people behind it) is [4]. At least safe to test it. [1] https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/user/own-instance.html https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/user/own-instance.html [2] https://github.com/searx/searx-docker https://github.com/searx/searx-docker [3] https://searx.space/ https://searx.space/ [4] https://search.privacytools.io/ https://search.privacytools.io/
    - floriol 7y ago
      Wouldn't running a private instance be the same as directly queryint google? Like, it queries through the same IP you use, and can build a profile just using that.
hoorayimhelping 7y ago
In the past couple of years, search has reverted to late 90s levels of result quality. Google used to get you exactly what you wanted for close to 20 years. Now you have to cross reference several search engines to find something other than terrible blogspam and obvious advertisements disguised as reviews. Search seems primed for disruption again. I appreciate DDG's privacy focus, but their results are often crap.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ProZsolt 7y ago
  I feel the same. Recently I started using Reddit for finding niche topics.
  - isoskeles 7y ago
    The most niche things I search for are typically career-related, so software questions. I'd guess more than 9 out of 10 queries, the result that I am looking for (i.e. the result that helps me) is on stackoverflow, github, or some apache mailing list. A search engine just for software, that crawls a whitelisted set of platforms and provides more relevant results (github's search is very poor, for example) would be perfect. Google seems to be the "best" at this right now, so while I use DDG to search most of the time, when I'm working I end up routing most of my queries to Google. Somewhat tangential, but the word "niche" made me think about this.
    - dorgo 7y ago
      site:github.com | site:stackoverflow.com keyword
    - _michaelll 7y ago
      you should build this! building a search engine today is no doubt an uphill battle, but the move toward more specialized platforms feels inevitable as there gets to be more and more of the web to index, search, and discover.
SonnyWortzik 7y ago
Some people just don't get the difference between Privacy and Anonymity.
- mindslight 7y ago
  Care to elaborate? Anonymity is part of privacy, which is part of security. Security is a multi-perspective problem. Often, false dichotomies are drawn to convince people to give up their own security in order to benefit someone else's security - eg saying "privacy versus security" as if they're in opposition, being personally disassembled and molested at the airport, "national security" in general, etc.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
godelski 7y ago
> I still can't find a good search engine where I don't spend more than 5 mins trying different keywords to get the results google gives me. I always hear this but myself have never had problems with DDG. I'm curious what you search for.(am I the odd one?) Image search is TERRIBLE, but web search I have no issues with. I actually like how DDG works with programming questions, how it gives the SO result on the side. Whenever I try Google I never end up getting better results. But that may be because I've been off them for years and so they can't provide any advantage.
- allenskd 7y ago
  It's.... a bit hard to define my current workspace. I do software development but a lot of that development is on legacy applications using some obscure API, perhaps a super old version of a known open source project that nobody uses anymore, or simply dealing with an application written two decades ago in C and I have to know specific things.... and I'd have to say searching on Google is just handy when it comes to this. It's not easy to describe I guess. For my normal "John Doe" usage I have no problems using DDG. But when it comes to work where I need to narrow it down the best I can I guess Google will always come to the rescue (but not always, haha.... nothing like dealing with undocumented libraries). I wish it was just language-specific behaviors at least I know there's always plenty to search on but... it's a little bit of everything.
- asjw 7y ago
  I've been using DDG as main search engine for 3 years, results for my queries are usually on par with Google in private mode, but if you're looking for results in any other language than English or non-tech stuff it falls behind big G
  - CaptainZapp 7y ago
    That's actually my only beef with DDG. Searches in German (and probably other languages than English too) are pretty fucking horrible. But on English searches it's my preferred search engine. It's definitely good enough in 98% of all cases and there's always !g if everything else breaks. So I definitely accept the language limitation. Especially since I know what to expect. The privacy focus more than balances this out.
sharatvir 7y ago
Strongly agree with your random observations. Something about Firefox on Mac is just incredibly slow at even basic things like switching tabs. This is on a higher end 2019 15" Macbook Pro. Whereas on Windows 10 it feels just as fast as Chrome.
SpaceManNabs 7y ago
It is good on Debian flavors of Linux too. I think the issues with Mac OS X are well known and have been worked on for a long time. It used to be image rendering in the past, and it is now other problems with rendering (transparent windows).
finchisko 7y ago
no issues on macOS. Older mac maybe?
- randcraw 7y ago
  No problem here either, on a 2015 iMac or 2018 MBP. I've used FF daily for 20 years on Mac/Linux and never been motivated to trade my security/privacy for a little speedup. Initially it was FF's ability to block video and invasive JS (w/ or w/o plugins) that was a game changer for me.
loopz 7y ago
DuckDuckGo works for me 95%. If I need local search, I flip that switch (below search-field). There's possibility of advanced searches as well.
- skrowl 7y ago
  Leave the search engine as DDG, and then just preface your searches with !g if you want to cross reference Google
nacs 7y ago
I've found Startpage ( https://startpage.com https://startpage.com ) to be a good compromise -- it delivers Google search results but proxies it through their servers for privacy / less-Google-tracking. Another handy thing is that Duckduckgo has a flag for it so you can search DDG first then just add '!s ' in front of your search terms to have the search done in Startpage instead. Also useful thing for iPhone is to set the default search engine for Safari to DDG instead of Google -- I can just type '!s' before my search terms to get Google results without the tracking.
- thirdsun 7y ago
  You should know that Startpage has been acquired by an advertising company: https://restoreprivacy.com/startpage-system1-privacy-one-group/ https://restoreprivacy.com/startpage-system1-privacy-one-gro...
pergadad 7y ago
Microsoft used to be very big in highlighting how much more privacy-minded they are. This was a massage pushed to policy makers across the world, and very significantly in Europe. This stopped 100% with the launch of Windows 10; I assume this is because of all the metrics it collects (often unknown to or explicitly against users' wishes). The only option for privacy-minded search seems to be to use one of the bing wrappers, most notably duckduckgo.
amaranth 7y ago
The sluggishness with video streaming in Firefox on macOS might be because Firefox supports VP9 so those services will use it to save bandwidth but macOS doesn't provide an API for hardware decoding of VP9 so it happens in software. Safari only supports h264 so that's what gets used and goes through hardware decoding. You can try extensions like h264ify on Firefox (and Chrome) to make it use h264 too.
pier25 7y ago
> Firefox for windows is perfect. I actually think it's faster on Windows than on OSX for whatever reason. I've found that most crossplatform software runs faster on Windows than on macOS, even when comparing to a better Mac hardware.
TheEndless2 7y ago
If you want literally Google's results with privacy -- use Startpage.com
nreece 7y ago
One evaluation found that Ecosia is 'better' than Google and Duck: https://www.kylepiira.com/2020/02/07/which-search-engine-has-the-best-results/ https://www.kylepiira.com/2020/02/07/which-search-engine-has...

npsomaratna 7y ago

I switched to DuckDuckgo a few months ago, and never looked back. The results used to be far inferior to Google's - but they seem to have caught up recently. If you haven't tried them out within the last couple of months, I strongly recommend that you give them a chance.

Pangia 7y ago
I switched to DuckDuckGo a number of years ago and while yes, their results have become better there are times in my line of work where I've had to use !g search item as Google still seems have to have the best results sometimes. Granted this is maybe once or twice in 3 - 4 months I end up using !g prefix.
- pixelrevision 7y ago
  Another helpful thing that can be done with Firefox is to add google.com to a container. One of the things google does that I really dislike is personalized search. Having a container specified for it lets me use the browser more naturally without having to open a private session.
  - monadic2 7y ago
    You can also configure firefox to never leave private mode—I can’t endorse this enough.
    - brigandish 7y ago
      Do you know if there's a way to get it to work with containers? Often, I'll use a container to remain logged in to a site and white list its cookies. It'd be good if non-container pages were in private mode by default.
- testuser66 7y ago
  Have been using Ecosia and I have to do a `g` search pretty much daily. Though the use Bing underneath, so maybe it's worth giving DuckDuckGo a try
king_magic 7y ago
I switched to DuckDuckGo, made it maybe two weeks, and finally gave up and switched back to Google. Their search results are still vastly inferior to Google.
- aembleton 7y ago
  Can you give an example search that doesn't work for you?
  - king_magic 7y ago
    No? I don't have a list handy, and I’m not the QA department for DDG. The point is - and yes, this is somewhat subjective - I found the quality of the results inferior to Google, and grudgingly switched back after a few weeks of disappointment.
    - dallbee 7y ago
      You're certainly not alone, but I've had such a wildly different experience. I switched to duckduckgo primarily because I preferred the search results. The privacy aspect was just a bonus. The only time I ever find myself using the !g escape hatch is when I'm searching something brand new (e.g. a breaking news story). Duckduckgo has a recency filter but it seems to take them a few days to ingest the content.
    - bestest 7y ago
      Same here. I'm still using duckduckgo on my private devices (phone and home laptop), at work I'm using google. I suppose the reason this works for me is at work I need GOOD results, thus google search there. At home I just need a search now and again, so duckduckgo is good enough for this. So, my private life stays my private life with duckduckgo. And at work — I don't really care what google does to my "js shortest path algorithm"-kind-of results history.
  - Tomte 7y ago
    From earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19043565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19043565

bad_user 7y ago

What I do is to use multiple search engines and specialize my searches. I use "smart keywords" [1], which work similarly to DuckDuckGo's !bangs [2] and most of the time I noticed that I know what the source I want is — if I want a Wikipedia article, I search with "@w" in front, if I'm searching for a dictionary definition, I search with a "@define", if I want to search for a location I search with "@maps", if I want a StackOverflow answer I search with "@so", etc, etc. I have bookmarks for such search engines, neatly being synchronized between my Firefox instances (works on mobile too) and I got quite used to them. I prefer my own bookmarks, b/c I can always add custom stuff and b/c I don't want an extra round trip to DDG anyway. Also DuckDuckGo is fine for English results, I often find that searches yielding bad results on DDG will often lead bad results on Google too. When not finding what I'm looking for, sometimes I search on Google too ("@g"), in order to double check. But you won't catch me searching for very personal stuff on Google — e.g. I'll never search for health advice on Google and even if DDG's results are bad, it's either that versus nothing at all. I'm also not super strict — we do use Gmail and Google Docs at work and that's fine, but I do prefer native clients for Gmail too and I prefer text files in my Dropbox for my own notes. I also pay for YouTube Premium, because otherwise my son is getting exposed to ads, plus I watch YouTube anyway and I'd rather have the ads-free experience on every device I own. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Smart%20keywords https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Smart%20keywords [2]: https://duckduckgo.com/bang https://duckduckgo.com/bang

dannyw 7y ago
> I still can't find a good search engine where I don't spend more than 5 mins trying different keywords to get the results google gives me.
- bad_user 7y ago
  Right and the TL;DR of my reply is — if I spend 5 mins on DDG or other websites, then I would have spent 5 mins on Google too, because in my experience Google's search results have degraded too — due to spam, plus I noticed the results further degrading after I toggled off the search history in my profile, but that's another discussion.
7y ago

dleslie 7y ago

Search is a privacy vulnerability anyhow; the better it is the more information about yourself you must have surrendered. Before good search was available the use of bookmarks and bookmark sharing was far more widespread, and discovering new content was somewhat of a social experience.

Fnoord 7y ago

SearX works very well, as good as Google, according to this comparison (which is the reason I went from DDG go SearX). [1] https://libretechtips.gitlab.io/detailed-tests-of-search-engines-google-startpage-bing-duckduckgo-metager-ecosia-swisscows-searx-qwant-yandex-and-mojeek/ https://libretechtips.gitlab.io/detailed-tests-of-search-eng...

DavideNL 7y ago
But which instance? You have to trust the hoster of the instance, but there seems to be little info on that...
- Fnoord 7y ago
  Great point. The SearX documentation addresses your concern here [1] I run my own, for myself only (via WireGuard). Its easy to set one up, for example with Docker [2]. However, I recommend to try it out first. A list of public instances is available here [3]. These lists include Tor entries (if you require anonimity, don't enable JS and use e.g. Tor Browser!), and also mention where they are hosted (if on clearweb). You can try it out there. That being said, one which seems safe (because of the people behind it) is [4]. At least safe to test it. [1] https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/user/own-instance.html https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/user/own-instance.html [2] https://github.com/searx/searx-docker https://github.com/searx/searx-docker [3] https://searx.space/ https://searx.space/ [4] https://search.privacytools.io/ https://search.privacytools.io/
  - floriol 7y ago
    Wouldn't running a private instance be the same as directly queryint google? Like, it queries through the same IP you use, and can build a profile just using that.

hoorayimhelping 7y ago

In the past couple of years, search has reverted to late 90s levels of result quality. Google used to get you exactly what you wanted for close to 20 years. Now you have to cross reference several search engines to find something other than terrible blogspam and obvious advertisements disguised as reviews. Search seems primed for disruption again. I appreciate DDG's privacy focus, but their results are often crap.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ProZsolt 7y ago
I feel the same. Recently I started using Reddit for finding niche topics.
- isoskeles 7y ago
  The most niche things I search for are typically career-related, so software questions. I'd guess more than 9 out of 10 queries, the result that I am looking for (i.e. the result that helps me) is on stackoverflow, github, or some apache mailing list. A search engine just for software, that crawls a whitelisted set of platforms and provides more relevant results (github's search is very poor, for example) would be perfect. Google seems to be the "best" at this right now, so while I use DDG to search most of the time, when I'm working I end up routing most of my queries to Google. Somewhat tangential, but the word "niche" made me think about this.
  - dorgo 7y ago
    site:github.com | site:stackoverflow.com keyword
  - _michaelll 7y ago
    you should build this! building a search engine today is no doubt an uphill battle, but the move toward more specialized platforms feels inevitable as there gets to be more and more of the web to index, search, and discover.

SonnyWortzik 7y ago

Some people just don't get the difference between Privacy and Anonymity.

mindslight 7y ago
Care to elaborate? Anonymity is part of privacy, which is part of security. Security is a multi-perspective problem. Often, false dichotomies are drawn to convince people to give up their own security in order to benefit someone else's security - eg saying "privacy versus security" as if they're in opposition, being personally disassembled and molested at the airport, "national security" in general, etc.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

godelski 7y ago

> I still can't find a good search engine where I don't spend more than 5 mins trying different keywords to get the results google gives me. I always hear this but myself have never had problems with DDG. I'm curious what you search for.(am I the odd one?) Image search is TERRIBLE, but web search I have no issues with. I actually like how DDG works with programming questions, how it gives the SO result on the side. Whenever I try Google I never end up getting better results. But that may be because I've been off them for years and so they can't provide any advantage.

allenskd 7y ago
It's.... a bit hard to define my current workspace. I do software development but a lot of that development is on legacy applications using some obscure API, perhaps a super old version of a known open source project that nobody uses anymore, or simply dealing with an application written two decades ago in C and I have to know specific things.... and I'd have to say searching on Google is just handy when it comes to this. It's not easy to describe I guess. For my normal "John Doe" usage I have no problems using DDG. But when it comes to work where I need to narrow it down the best I can I guess Google will always come to the rescue (but not always, haha.... nothing like dealing with undocumented libraries). I wish it was just language-specific behaviors at least I know there's always plenty to search on but... it's a little bit of everything.
asjw 7y ago
I've been using DDG as main search engine for 3 years, results for my queries are usually on par with Google in private mode, but if you're looking for results in any other language than English or non-tech stuff it falls behind big G
- CaptainZapp 7y ago
  That's actually my only beef with DDG. Searches in German (and probably other languages than English too) are pretty fucking horrible. But on English searches it's my preferred search engine. It's definitely good enough in 98% of all cases and there's always !g if everything else breaks. So I definitely accept the language limitation. Especially since I know what to expect. The privacy focus more than balances this out.

sharatvir 7y ago

Strongly agree with your random observations. Something about Firefox on Mac is just incredibly slow at even basic things like switching tabs. This is on a higher end 2019 15" Macbook Pro. Whereas on Windows 10 it feels just as fast as Chrome.

SpaceManNabs 7y ago

It is good on Debian flavors of Linux too. I think the issues with Mac OS X are well known and have been worked on for a long time. It used to be image rendering in the past, and it is now other problems with rendering (transparent windows).

finchisko 7y ago

no issues on macOS. Older mac maybe?

randcraw 7y ago
No problem here either, on a 2015 iMac or 2018 MBP. I've used FF daily for 20 years on Mac/Linux and never been motivated to trade my security/privacy for a little speedup. Initially it was FF's ability to block video and invasive JS (w/ or w/o plugins) that was a game changer for me.

loopz 7y ago

DuckDuckGo works for me 95%. If I need local search, I flip that switch (below search-field). There's possibility of advanced searches as well.

skrowl 7y ago
Leave the search engine as DDG, and then just preface your searches with !g if you want to cross reference Google

nacs 7y ago

I've found Startpage ( https://startpage.com https://startpage.com ) to be a good compromise -- it delivers Google search results but proxies it through their servers for privacy / less-Google-tracking. Another handy thing is that Duckduckgo has a flag for it so you can search DDG first then just add '!s ' in front of your search terms to have the search done in Startpage instead. Also useful thing for iPhone is to set the default search engine for Safari to DDG instead of Google -- I can just type '!s' before my search terms to get Google results without the tracking.

thirdsun 7y ago
You should know that Startpage has been acquired by an advertising company: https://restoreprivacy.com/startpage-system1-privacy-one-group/ https://restoreprivacy.com/startpage-system1-privacy-one-gro...

pergadad 7y ago

Microsoft used to be very big in highlighting how much more privacy-minded they are. This was a massage pushed to policy makers across the world, and very significantly in Europe. This stopped 100% with the launch of Windows 10; I assume this is because of all the metrics it collects (often unknown to or explicitly against users' wishes). The only option for privacy-minded search seems to be to use one of the bing wrappers, most notably duckduckgo.

amaranth 7y ago

The sluggishness with video streaming in Firefox on macOS might be because Firefox supports VP9 so those services will use it to save bandwidth but macOS doesn't provide an API for hardware decoding of VP9 so it happens in software. Safari only supports h264 so that's what gets used and goes through hardware decoding. You can try extensions like h264ify on Firefox (and Chrome) to make it use h264 too.

pier25 7y ago

> Firefox for windows is perfect. I actually think it's faster on Windows than on OSX for whatever reason. I've found that most crossplatform software runs faster on Windows than on macOS, even when comparing to a better Mac hardware.

TheEndless2 7y ago

If you want literally Google's results with privacy -- use Startpage.com

nreece 7y ago

One evaluation found that Ecosia is 'better' than Google and Duck: https://www.kylepiira.com/2020/02/07/which-search-engine-has-the-best-results/ https://www.kylepiira.com/2020/02/07/which-search-engine-has...