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Dear Google: you are becoming less likable by the second. For a long time you were the champion of user experience and you forced a lot of sleazy products to ch
by indymike 5y ago
Dear Google: you are becoming less likable by the second. For a long time you were the champion of user experience and you forced a lot of sleazy products to change or go out of business. Recently, it's like you've systematically discovered every dark pattern your evangelists once scorned. Please, please flip the don't be evil bit back to on. Evil Google is not very likable.
- lumost 5y agoOn the other side, DuckDuckGo is becoming pretty reasonable. I now only need to flip back to google for some hard to search technical topics. DDG also brings up a ton more of the old internet, you get way more variety in the search results.
- indymike 5y agoI've been using Brave search. It's actually a change for the better, too.
- loonster 5y agoBrave search is crap. It feels like DDG when it first launched. I want to like it, but the index it uses is old. I often get links that don't work.
- poppytaker 5y agoI use Brave and ddg (depending on browser). Brave is only worse when it comes to location specific searches, otherwise for general searches I'm agnostic between the two. Still fallback to !g bangs on every couple of days.
- loonster 5y agoI've gotten several results were the link is no longer valid.
- dismalpedigree 5y agoI have been using DDG for years. I inadvertently used google for a search (damn browser defaults) and i was genuinely difficult to find something relevant with the amount of ads cluttering it up.
- codyb 5y agoYea I’m always amazed when I inadvertently search via Google for something these days.
- Kliment 5y agoYeah, whenever I end up on google for whatever reason I get a nag screen to try to trick me into agreeing to their tracking crap (with no easy way to say "fuck off, no") and it seems to come back very frequently. I use ddg pretty much exclusively now.
- Closi 5y agoThere are Firefox extensions that hide the ads which make a huge difference to search quality.
- pmontra 5y agoI fall back to !g when I don't find what I'm looking for. It happens too often for technical things. And Google is the only one that handles "verbatim searches". At least I'm splitting my trail of data between two companies.
- nightski 5y agoI hear people say this but I haven't even desired to use a !g for several years now (good riddance). I wonder if it is for certain types of tech.
- lumost 5y agoIt’s common for “ambiguous search terms” similar to “python database”. I’d bet that an experienced ddg user might have workarounds for this kind of thing. I’ve certainly found adding a few extra terms gives me what I need.
- pmontra 5y agoI found an example right now. I looked on DDG for _ubuntu turn on a usb disk after it was switched off_ and it didn't return anything related to the query. I added !g and Google gave me [1] as the second result. [1] https://superuser.com/questions/1626369/power-off-external-disk-in-ubuntu-then-turn-it-back-on-remotely-without-rebooti https://superuser.com/questions/1626369/power-off-external-d...
- foxfluff 5y agoWill they stay reasonable? "DuckDuckGo gains revenue via advertisements and affiliate programs." Today I'm quite skeptical of any business that doesn't have a proper business model. I've seen it too many times: offer nice free things until you have enough users, and then start squeezing. Bait and switch. At this point I'm more interested in internet search that isn't reliant on the goodwill and dignity of a private company.
- scim-knox-twox 5y ago> Today I'm quite skeptical of any business that doesn't have a proper business model. But they have? DDG was founded 13 years ago... And "bussiness model": https://wikiless.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo?lang=en#Business_model https://wikiless.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo?lang=en#Business_model And: https://www.nichepursuits.com/how-does-duckduckgo-make-money/ https://www.nichepursuits.com/how-does-duckduckgo-make-money...
- Lamad123 5y agoThey are monopolizing evil too now!!
- jjulius 5y agoFor me, the very extensive track record you allude to is more than enough to convince me that Google's never flipping the "don't be evil" bit back on. It's gone. Done. Sayonara. Adios. Bon voyage. Kaput. Fin. Au revoir. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
- justin_oaks 5y agoI tend to agree. Companies don't seem to switch to being good once they go evil. I would love it if someone could share a counterexample. I want it to be true that companies don't just turn evil but can become better too.
- social_quotient 5y agoHow about Microsoft?
- capybara_2020 5y agoStuffing bloatware on Windows, using dark patterns to try and get you to use Edge. Trying to force you to use you online accounts rather than local accounts. The whole doing good was just usual PR.
- jjulius 5y agoFor a second it seemed like they might be headed that way, but nope. They've made some fairly user-hostile decisions recently, at least IMO.
- dataflow 5y agoThe forced obsolescence with Windows 11 designed purely to help Intel sell hardware at the cost of the planet's well-being was pretty evil.
- fartcannon 5y agoYou're confusing good with good PR.
- 5y ago
- president 5y agoThe sad truth is that the average person won't care
- indymike 5y agoIt's easy to say this, mainly because the average person really just doesn't care.
- scarface74 5y agoWhen has Google ever been the champion of user experience? Their core product is barely usable without an adblocker.
- anyfoo 5y agoDefinitely in the 90s and early 2000s at least, possibly longer. That was part of their thing, being the champion of user experience.
- qbasic_forever 5y agoGmail was a way, way, way better experience than Hotmail or anything else when it started (and even almost a decade later). Maps blew everyone's mind at launch too and instantly made an entire group of direction and mapping websites irrelevant. Google Earth was magical just spending hours trotting around the globe too. Reader (RIP) was by far the best RSS reader.
- datalist 5y agoMaps and Earth were not in-house built but purchased.
- Graffur 5y agoMaps was amazing at first and then it got ruined bit by bit. But somewhere along the way it got awesome again. I think it's really good right now.
- quartesixte 5y agoWAIT WHAT? [real time search ongoing] Goodness how have I not known this?!
- foxfluff 5y agoYep, I had Earthviewer 3D installed on my PC before Google Earth was a thing.
- 5y ago
- ComodoHacker 5y agoI may be wrong or naive, but I see this move (offer search history that won't be used for advertising) as a good one. Looks like they are finally trying to diversify their business models and have their users as customers, not product. If true, that means our social pressure on Google (and Facebook, collaterally) is working, and we should keep applying it.
- 3np 5y agoStill, it defaults to on, so if history is turned off and you miss the email, it will now be silently turned on. The right thing to do would be to pop up a question asking if I want to opt in, keeping it to off if dismissed. Considering all the other blocking modals Google is forcing me through as part of CAPTCHA when surfing the web, that should not be a big deal. Opting an existing user into data retention without asking them is never defensible, and I imagine this will result in heavy fines in the EU down the line (after all, private individuals can be Workspace admins as well, it’s not strictly used by businesses)
- SyzygistSix 5y agoThe problem to me isn't that they flipped the Don't Be Evil Bit off, but that they have to ability to turn it on and off. Giving any entity this much power is a bad idea in the first place. Even if they do not presently abuse it, eventually someone will. And that is not something I want to pass on to future generations.