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>Do we want, at a time when Russia is considering the UK as an enemy, to be providing all our personal details to a server in Moscow? Depends how good the sear
by whywhywhywhy 3y ago
>Do we want, at a time when Russia is considering the UK as an enemy, to be providing all our personal details to a server in Moscow?
Depends how good the search is. Google doesn’t seem to want to provide me proper results anymore, even very basic image search tasks on google now net you only about 20 results all of which are wrong or useless. Yandex image search actually works.
If you don’t want me to use the Russian tech that helps me get my job done then roll back the Google Search codebase 10 years to when it worked as well as Yandex does today. (Only partially joking)
- GaggiX 3y agoThe thing I found ridiculous about Google today is the image reverse search, unusable, but I have an extension to use the previous one before Google Lens was a thing.
- Alifatisk 3y agoWhat’s the name of the extension? Didn’t know you could use the old Google images.
- dessant 3y agoThe classic reverse image search results from Google will not be around for much longer, I've been getting reports about my browser extension no longer working with Google Images in some regions. Yandex Images also possibly going away or becoming heavily censored is also an issue for journalists and researchers, since it is the best performing publicly available reverse image search engine.
- kypro 3y agoI wrote a comment a few years back how I was using Yandex quite a bit at the time because there are things I'm simply unable to find on Google – sites like sci-hub for example. Today though I find myself using it daily. The results are far from perfect, but I've never suspected them to be randomly hiding or suppressing search results like many of the popular Western alternatives. I don't use image search much, but yes I completely agree with you there. Google image search is completely unusable to me at this point, so I always default to Bing and Yandex for that (still need to try Brave). And Yandex imo is the only search engine with a functional reverse image search anymore.
- sva_ 3y ago> sites like sci-hub for example To be fair, that is not Google's fault. It always cracks me up that when you see the DMCA note on the bottom and you click on it, you get to see the hosts anyways: https://lumendatabase.org/notices/26024315 https://lumendatabase.org/notices/26024315
- atahanacar 3y agoThat is how I search for pirated content.
- WeylandYutani 3y agoYes the Russians don't really produce a lot of software or entertainment that Westerners want. So they have no stake in enforcement of copyright.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>Senders: [...] Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH Why am I not surprised to see Springer as one of the claimants? /rhetorical question
- unsupp0rted 3y agoWhy don't you just click on Google Image Search's Pinterest links?
- chaosbolt 3y ago>Do we want, at a time when Russia is considering the UK as an enemy, to be providing all our personal details to a server in Moscow? (answering to the OP) Yes, there is nothing the Russians can do with my data that my government hasn't done. >Depends how good the search is. Google doesn’t seem to want to provide me proper results anymore, even very basic image search tasks on google now net you only about 20 results all of which are wrong or useless. Yandex image search actually works. Same, google is either doing this on purpose to then launch the "saving" LLM or they're just forgetting how to do it, google images is unusable and when it is everything is a .webp. And google search is a pay to win, you type "official python documentation" and the whole first page is full of geekforgeeks and other sponsored websited, and don't even get me started on facts/news where it just shamelessly turns into a propaganda machine. Yandex is at least gives you 5 or 6 good results before it starts showing things in Russian.
- afavour 3y ago> Yes, there is nothing the Russians can do with my data that my government hasn't done. I understand anti-government sentiment but whenever I see a statement like this it makes me devalue anything that comes after it. You really think there is nothing a foreign government might do with your personal data that your government hasn't already done? You really feel like there's a similar level of accountability at stake?
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoGiven that they live in the US/UK and not in Russia, yes. As I understand it, the claim is not that the US/UK are as evil as Russia, or even more or less morally equivalent. The claim is that the US/UK hoover up online information just like Russia (maybe even more), and that they are more exposed to what the US/UK governments do than they are to what Russia does. Without minimizing the misdeeds of Russia, without resorting to (false) moral equivalence, it's still a defensible point. (Mind you, I'm not sure I agree with it. But it's defensible.)
- AlecSchueler 3y ago
- roenxi 3y agoThere is a reasonable argument that, as a minor nobody, we should rather use services from hostile countries. It isn't feasible for Russia to to compel someone in an English-speaking country to do something unpleasant. That is a lot more than can be said for the local police or politicians. Russian corruption doesn't generally touch Western governments - the atmosphere is too hostile to it.
- 0xDEF 3y ago>Russian corruption doesn't generally touch Western governments - the atmosphere is too hostile to it. Brussels, Vienna, and many other European capitals are full of Russian "lobbyists".
- di456 3y ago> Russian corruption doesn't generally touch Western governments - the atmosphere is too hostile to it. Some recent parts of the government welcome the corruption. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-citizens-and-russian-intelligence-officers-charged-conspiring-use-us-citizens-illegal https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-citizens-and-russian-intel... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/us/politics/election-interference-russia-2020-assessment.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/us/politics/election-inte...
- barbariangrunge 3y agoI don’t know, you’ve never heard of blackmail? $500 in Bitcoin to some wallet or we leak your search results to your church group?
- suslik 3y agoHow would they connect search results to an individual? Surely, a simple VPN, which is a basic internet hygene these days, prevents that.
- ludwik 3y agoThat's what AOL thought when they released the anonymized search data of their users (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_log_release https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_log_release). Turns out they were very wrong.
- skilled 3y agoI challenge you to spend a day searching with Bing or DDG and then come back with the same opinion.
- cod1r 3y agoYandex search is superior 100%. I use it too when I'm trying to reverse search for an image.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Craighead 3y ago[dead]
- lampshades 3y agoI use Yandex whenever I feel like Google is censoring something. Turns out I feel that way a lot.
- ric2b 3y agoIs the feeling right more or less often than you expect?
- lampshades 3y agoOriginally it was right more often than I expected but now I have a pretty good sense that I'm usually right.
- caeril 3y agoThere's also the important question of jurisdiction and closeness. If I have to share my data with someone, I'd rather it be someone distant, and with limited capability. Sharing my data with Google is effectively the same thing as sharing my data with the FBI. And the FBI can stick guns in my face and lock me in a steel cage for anything they don't like in said data. While I'm no fan of Putin, his regime can do precisely nothing actionable with my data, so long as I don't set foot in its territory.