8 ms·

Life Without Google: Australia Is Now Facing the Unthinkable

29 points by hodgesrm 5y ago

zepto 5y ago
Hardly ‘unthinkable’. More like a minor inconvenience. Yes, Google can produce search results that other engines do not, but DDG, Neeva, and even bing are fine for most things.
- NoPie 5y ago
  Neeva was not available for me in Europe. Is it available in Australia at all?
  - ben-schaaf 5y ago
    Just checked; it isn't. DDG works fine of course.
- kook_throwaway 5y ago
  In March 2020 I cut out a bunch of corporate oligarchs from my life not quite cold turkey but in fairly quick succession including windows/ms, google (android included), amazon(yes), Netflix/Hulu(also yes), and chain restaurants. It seemed like it was going to be much harder than it really was. It was as you described, an inconvenience, during the teething period. The only part I couldn't keep up was using the pinephone as my only phone. If it could reliably receive calls and sms I would have. I've since switched to degoogled Android. It took a while before everyone was on matrix, but we're there now. Fluffychat is great for normies. I really like searx a lot, but it requires some tuning to not be horribly slow with dead engines.
  - 6510 5y ago
    a laptop maybe?
- AlexCoventry 5y ago
  Wow, Neeva's business model looks much better for end users. Thanks for the pointer.
darepublic 5y ago
You can do it Australia, destroy the myth of Google infallibility
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Is there such a myth that’s widely held? I find Google incredibly useful, but I’ve never considered them anything close to infallible.
- p_j_w 5y ago
  You should take a look at the law in question here. It's not a good thing that we should be cheering on.
karmakaze 5y ago
> read more from Bloomberg — and everyone else on Medium. > You’ve read all your free member-only stories. Become a member to get unlimited access and support the voices you want to hear more from. [Upgrade] I would be glad if we disabled posts from Medium content on HN. Mostly shallow anyway.
- sologoub 5y ago
  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-11/life-without-google-australia-is-now-facing-the-unthinkable https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-11/life-with...
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Fair warning, expressing that opinion is liable to get you dogpiled around here (but I feel like you're absolutely right). I have nothing against Medium articles, but they really have no place on HN. If you want to read Medium articles, they have an app that already aggregates content for you. Furthermore, if we can't really archive these sites to share with everyone else, it's just a moot point. Every Medium article that I see on HN just feels like a trojan-horse ad.
  - shermozle 5y ago
    Medium: for when your opinions are neither rare nor well done.
- novok 5y ago
  At this point, I've given up on the paywall links and just use circumvention methods: 1. Open link in a private window, if that doesn't work 2. Use the 'Web Archives' extension and click archive.is to view the shared article without paywalls. For mobile, I wonder if there is an equivalent 'web archives' app that lets you share a web link to it to open it automatically in the app. At this point, I wish HN just provided an archive.is or similar link along with the original link.
  - salamandersauce 5y ago
motohagiography 5y ago
Cynically, it could be win-win, as it could give a big advantage to people smart enough to circumvent the ban, and remove an equalizing tool for people who aren't. Sort of like how drug laws empower cartels, and gun laws arm mainly criminals, a lack of google would mean only the extra-clever would have access to that set of tools, and they could use them to find each other and organize. :)
m-p-3 5y ago
IPFS mirror https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmZQmFZsj57Gw9eHJRGgPVm1ZbSKrWir1fcoxeUyo1X4TJ/ https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmZQmFZsj57Gw9eHJRGgPVm1ZbSKrWir1fcoxeU...
- 1MachineElf 5y ago
  How is this hosted on IPFS? Is it via ipwb? (https://github.com/oduwsdl/ipwb https://github.com/oduwsdl/ipwb)
  - m-p-3 5y ago
    Through a browser addon from https://2read.net https://2read.net, then I pin the IPFS path on my own IPFS node to make sure at least one copy stays alive at least somewhere.
AnotherGoodName 5y ago
If you're wondering how this happened it's because Ruper Murdoch (Fox news) is from Australia and controls the majority of media in Australia. The current party in power gives him everything he asks for and more. Including subsidies for spectrum licences. In return they get very favorable coverage in the media. The second biggest party in Australia also tries to pander to him but aren't as good at it. Murdoch sucks at technology. He bought MySpace at its peak and ran it into the ground. So all he has is old media. Old media is getting crushed by the lack of advertising revenue. The only way forward is to get Google and Facebook banned. It's a meme to hate on the big tech companies ("Delete Facebook") but they are a million times better than a media landscape of only Sky news and associated right wing papers and radio (essentially Fox news in Australia).
- zh3 5y ago
  Speaking of Murdoch, Sky News is banned for a week by Youtube for doing Fox News in Australia (covid misinformation) [0] [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-58045787 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-58045787
wyxuan 5y ago
If Duckduckgo wants to stay principled, it should stand next to Google and defend the open internet. They shouldn't claim to be principled and then take a cheap shot at Google by bowing down to Murdoch. Yes, I get that they're a business and good on them for taking more market share but I'm not calling out Microsoft because they're not claiming to be the good guys.
avivo 5y ago
This should have a date in the title. It's from February 11th.
jmclnx 5y ago
Why can't google just say "to see this result you need to pay Murdoch" instead of the link ? I think that would change the company's mind rather quickly.
- candiodari 5y ago
  The law says that this or any form of even mentioning payment is forbidden. Nor is it allowed for Google to just not have the links at all.
orf 5y ago
> Software-engineering student Patrick Smith exemplifies Australia’s Google dependency. The 24-year-old from Canberra said he sometimes racks up 400 Google searches a day to help with his studies, catch up on news and look up recipes. Look up recipes, eh? I wonder how the software development field would cope with Google being disabled.
- gumby 5y ago
  Just use another search engine, like ddg
Barrin92 5y ago
article makes the point that Search is better in quality than most competitors but honestly I could live with Bing. Mail, Drive or Android, that would be a headache. I also think the advantage of Google over competitors is somewhat overhyped, in particular when it comes to English search results. In foreign languages Google is in my experience way better, but in English I feel like it more comes down to learn how to Google, which is something most people don't seem to recognize is a skill.
dd444fgdfg 5y ago
I think that the risk for Google is finally starting to come over the horizon. DDG, Bing, Brave? are now almost just good enough and google has not successfully diversified their revenue from search ads. The law of diminishing returns, search is only ever going to be so good. GMail isn't that great anymore. Gsuite is convenient not great. They're really open to disruption now. I'm definately no Microsoft fanboy, quite the opposite actually. But I think they could disrupt google over the next 5 years if they lay their ducks in order.
- slickrick216 5y ago
  Don’t forget that GCP is terrible and untrustworthy. So not many business are willing to chance it.
airbreather 5y ago
I think we would be fine, my experience is the first 2-6 pages of any google search usually is paid advertising in some form. A lot of information I search for has had no SEO performed on it so it gets buried in the results on the first pass.

29 points by hodgesrm 5y ago

Hardly ‘unthinkable’. More like a minor inconvenience. Yes, Google can produce search results that other engines do not, but DDG, Neeva, and even bing are fine for most things.

NoPie 5y ago
Neeva was not available for me in Europe. Is it available in Australia at all?
- ben-schaaf 5y ago
  Just checked; it isn't. DDG works fine of course.
kook_throwaway 5y ago
In March 2020 I cut out a bunch of corporate oligarchs from my life not quite cold turkey but in fairly quick succession including windows/ms, google (android included), amazon(yes), Netflix/Hulu(also yes), and chain restaurants. It seemed like it was going to be much harder than it really was. It was as you described, an inconvenience, during the teething period. The only part I couldn't keep up was using the pinephone as my only phone. If it could reliably receive calls and sms I would have. I've since switched to degoogled Android. It took a while before everyone was on matrix, but we're there now. Fluffychat is great for normies. I really like searx a lot, but it requires some tuning to not be horribly slow with dead engines.
- 6510 5y ago
  a laptop maybe?
AlexCoventry 5y ago
Wow, Neeva's business model looks much better for end users. Thanks for the pointer.

darepublic 5y ago

You can do it Australia, destroy the myth of Google infallibility

sokoloff 5y ago
Is there such a myth that’s widely held? I find Google incredibly useful, but I’ve never considered them anything close to infallible.
p_j_w 5y ago
You should take a look at the law in question here. It's not a good thing that we should be cheering on.

karmakaze 5y ago

> read more from Bloomberg — and everyone else on Medium. > You’ve read all your free member-only stories. Become a member to get unlimited access and support the voices you want to hear more from. [Upgrade] I would be glad if we disabled posts from Medium content on HN. Mostly shallow anyway.

sologoub 5y ago
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-11/life-without-google-australia-is-now-facing-the-unthinkable https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-11/life-with...
smoldesu 5y ago
Fair warning, expressing that opinion is liable to get you dogpiled around here (but I feel like you're absolutely right). I have nothing against Medium articles, but they really have no place on HN. If you want to read Medium articles, they have an app that already aggregates content for you. Furthermore, if we can't really archive these sites to share with everyone else, it's just a moot point. Every Medium article that I see on HN just feels like a trojan-horse ad.
- shermozle 5y ago
  Medium: for when your opinions are neither rare nor well done.
novok 5y ago
At this point, I've given up on the paywall links and just use circumvention methods: 1. Open link in a private window, if that doesn't work 2. Use the 'Web Archives' extension and click archive.is to view the shared article without paywalls. For mobile, I wonder if there is an equivalent 'web archives' app that lets you share a web link to it to open it automatically in the app. At this point, I wish HN just provided an archive.is or similar link along with the original link.
- salamandersauce 5y ago

motohagiography 5y ago

Cynically, it could be win-win, as it could give a big advantage to people smart enough to circumvent the ban, and remove an equalizing tool for people who aren't. Sort of like how drug laws empower cartels, and gun laws arm mainly criminals, a lack of google would mean only the extra-clever would have access to that set of tools, and they could use them to find each other and organize. :)

m-p-3 5y ago

IPFS mirror https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmZQmFZsj57Gw9eHJRGgPVm1ZbSKrWir1fcoxeUyo1X4TJ/ https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmZQmFZsj57Gw9eHJRGgPVm1ZbSKrWir1fcoxeU...

1MachineElf 5y ago
How is this hosted on IPFS? Is it via ipwb? (https://github.com/oduwsdl/ipwb https://github.com/oduwsdl/ipwb)
- m-p-3 5y ago
  Through a browser addon from https://2read.net https://2read.net, then I pin the IPFS path on my own IPFS node to make sure at least one copy stays alive at least somewhere.

AnotherGoodName 5y ago

If you're wondering how this happened it's because Ruper Murdoch (Fox news) is from Australia and controls the majority of media in Australia. The current party in power gives him everything he asks for and more. Including subsidies for spectrum licences. In return they get very favorable coverage in the media. The second biggest party in Australia also tries to pander to him but aren't as good at it. Murdoch sucks at technology. He bought MySpace at its peak and ran it into the ground. So all he has is old media. Old media is getting crushed by the lack of advertising revenue. The only way forward is to get Google and Facebook banned. It's a meme to hate on the big tech companies ("Delete Facebook") but they are a million times better than a media landscape of only Sky news and associated right wing papers and radio (essentially Fox news in Australia).

zh3 5y ago
Speaking of Murdoch, Sky News is banned for a week by Youtube for doing Fox News in Australia (covid misinformation) [0] [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-58045787 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-58045787

wyxuan 5y ago

If Duckduckgo wants to stay principled, it should stand next to Google and defend the open internet. They shouldn't claim to be principled and then take a cheap shot at Google by bowing down to Murdoch. Yes, I get that they're a business and good on them for taking more market share but I'm not calling out Microsoft because they're not claiming to be the good guys.

avivo 5y ago

This should have a date in the title. It's from February 11th.

jmclnx 5y ago

Why can't google just say "to see this result you need to pay Murdoch" instead of the link ? I think that would change the company's mind rather quickly.

candiodari 5y ago
The law says that this or any form of even mentioning payment is forbidden. Nor is it allowed for Google to just not have the links at all.

orf 5y ago

> Software-engineering student Patrick Smith exemplifies Australia’s Google dependency. The 24-year-old from Canberra said he sometimes racks up 400 Google searches a day to help with his studies, catch up on news and look up recipes. Look up recipes, eh? I wonder how the software development field would cope with Google being disabled.

gumby 5y ago
Just use another search engine, like ddg

Barrin92 5y ago

article makes the point that Search is better in quality than most competitors but honestly I could live with Bing. Mail, Drive or Android, that would be a headache. I also think the advantage of Google over competitors is somewhat overhyped, in particular when it comes to English search results. In foreign languages Google is in my experience way better, but in English I feel like it more comes down to learn how to Google, which is something most people don't seem to recognize is a skill.

dd444fgdfg 5y ago

I think that the risk for Google is finally starting to come over the horizon. DDG, Bing, Brave? are now almost just good enough and google has not successfully diversified their revenue from search ads. The law of diminishing returns, search is only ever going to be so good. GMail isn't that great anymore. Gsuite is convenient not great. They're really open to disruption now. I'm definately no Microsoft fanboy, quite the opposite actually. But I think they could disrupt google over the next 5 years if they lay their ducks in order.

slickrick216 5y ago
Don’t forget that GCP is terrible and untrustworthy. So not many business are willing to chance it.

airbreather 5y ago

I think we would be fine, my experience is the first 2-6 pages of any google search usually is paid advertising in some form. A lot of information I search for has had no SEO performed on it so it gets buried in the results on the first pass.