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Something that has happened to me over the past month that I never thought would happen - I'm actively looking to use Bing and DuckDuckGo over Google. Bing, so

Something that has happened to me over the past month that I never thought would happen - I'm actively looking to use Bing and DuckDuckGo over Google. Bing, something I laughed at just a few months ago. Google's results are starting to waver and the Google+ requirement is a cancer eating their products from the inside.

ykaranfil 14y ago
I don't know if this is normal? I followed the tutorial on fixtracking.com and installed DuckDuckGo plug-in for Firefox, and later i realized by analyzing http traffic that everything i type in address bar is sent to DuckDuckGo, even it is not selected as a default search engine. I wouldn't trust DuckDuckGo
- crazedpsyc 14y ago
  There is nothing malicious going on there. It does that so you can get instant answers where there would normally be auto-completion. This is covered very nicely in a paragraph in the addon's description, and can very obviously be disabled in the addon's preferences.
  - ykaranfil 14y ago
    If you check the chrome page on fixtracking.com (prepared by DuckDuckGo), it is asking you to uncheck "Use a prediction service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar", so what is the point here?It is enabled by default.
    - crazedpsyc 14y ago
      Not sure what you mean there -- these are two completely different things. That disables using a service (Google or Bing) to autocomplete. It does not affect what extensions like the DuckDuckGo one do.
lettergram 14y ago
>Google's results are starting to waver I'll be honest I don't know for sure, but I highly doubt Google would intentionally hurt themselves by ruining their search results. Also, >Google+ requirement is a cancer eating their products from the inside. I do agree it's B.S. but using 4 different computers on a regular basis and being a student I find it more useful to use their products than not. Especially, the syncing options so basically my drive/chrome holds everything between all my computers. This would be impossible without having some way to link them (via email say, well they use Google+ to try and make more money like every company NEEDS to do to survive). Therefore I say I am alright with their changes because Bing and DuckDuckGo have significantly reduced capacities (to the point of usability is fair at best)
- criley 14y ago
  Google+ is a blight. I have multiple Google Accounts (I don't need my real name attached to my main gmail account!) and it's utter horror trying to use Google products. You either give up on having an anonymous email because they WILL FORCE YOUR real name to be attached to your email, or you give up on Google integration features because you simply CANNOT use Google features without a real name anymore. Trying to switch between my "public Google account" for functionality and my "private Google account" for privacy is almost impossible when you consider how broadly Google integrates the features. It's simply unteneable, completely. Google wants my privacy gone, and is denying me access to their services until I agree to give it up entirely. Very, very frustrating for users who have more than one account.
  - Houshalter 14y ago
    I tried to create multiple YouTube channels for uploading different types of videos since I didn't want them all bundled in one channel. That now requires making multiple Google accounts. It's not impossible but it's highly discouraged, and they require registering each one with a phone number.
  - criley 14y ago
    Reply to myself: If you're an Android dev, sorry I've never rated your apps, left comments or gotten ahold of you! The Play Store REQUIRES a fully activated real-name Google+ Account to rate apps and leave feedback, so I've been wholly unable to communicate with the dozens and dozens of apps that request feedback. Sorry friends. Blame Google!
dornab 14y ago
Did you ever try the google vs bing comparison site? (http://www.bingiton.com/ http://www.bingiton.com/). I tried it and google won 5-0, it wasn't even close! But I agree that google is not what it used to be. They have a weird hunger for our data. But it's not just them, all web companies have become very aggressive in getting our data, it feels like we're being watched the whole time. It's exactly the opposite of what the internet was early on, it's almost like a change in the philosophy of the web. And not for the better. It seems like issues that famous people have, that they lose privacy at the price of fame, that whatever they do is public, forever. We all lost privacy and we didn't even get fame!
- muraiki 14y ago
  Wow, thanks for pointing that site out. I was actually hoping to see an improvement in Bing, but I picked Google 4 out of 5 times (doing more than just programming related searches, too)
- myko 14y ago
  I like to imagine someday Microsoft is going to come out and say the results which they said Google won Bing won and vice versa. This is the only thing that makes sense given Microsoft's marketing speak on that site (suggesting Bing wins in the majority of cases) as I've never known someone to actually have Bing come out on top.
  - saurik 14y ago
    When I came up with my own search terms, Google won, 4 to 1. When I selected from the set they gave me (the list below the box to type in a manual query), Bing honestly won every single round. That's actually how they ran the experiment: they gave each person a set of search terms chosen from the Google Zeitgeist to select from. If you are curious to learn more about the experiment, Microsoft has a not-terribly-in-depth article covering the setup (there may be something more in-depth somewhere, but this is what Bing forwarded me to and it at least seems to directly answer your question). http://www.bing.com/blogs/site_blogs/b/search/archive/2013/02/06/bing-your-brain-test-then-test-again.aspx http://www.bing.com/blogs/site_blogs/b/search/archive/2013/0... Frankly, though, the reason that I believe Bing kept winning for me is that for these really popular core queries, the results were very similar: Bing simply selected more useful text snippets from news articles (letting me avoid clicking results) and weirdly even had better page titles, so it made what was overall the same results more pleasant to use. When I selected my own queries, though, the fact that Google continues to (and will forever) have a larger selection of the Internet available to its search engine became the deciding factor, as it would surface a few interesting things that Bing wouldn't catch. What I thereby obtain from Bing it On! is not that I want to switch from Google, but that Google has too much power at this point: they are probably forever going to get my search queries simply because they figured out how to index the web extensively and efficiently before "how to build scalable systems" became more general knowledge (although some of that is actually due to Google, so there's this part of me that is saying "shut up and be grateful"), but now that they have this lead there's no real way to kick them down, even if someone else has managed to use the data they have more effectively.

ykaranfil 14y ago

I don't know if this is normal? I followed the tutorial on fixtracking.com and installed DuckDuckGo plug-in for Firefox, and later i realized by analyzing http traffic that everything i type in address bar is sent to DuckDuckGo, even it is not selected as a default search engine. I wouldn't trust DuckDuckGo

crazedpsyc 14y ago
There is nothing malicious going on there. It does that so you can get instant answers where there would normally be auto-completion. This is covered very nicely in a paragraph in the addon's description, and can very obviously be disabled in the addon's preferences.
- ykaranfil 14y ago
  If you check the chrome page on fixtracking.com (prepared by DuckDuckGo), it is asking you to uncheck "Use a prediction service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar", so what is the point here?It is enabled by default.
  - crazedpsyc 14y ago
    Not sure what you mean there -- these are two completely different things. That disables using a service (Google or Bing) to autocomplete. It does not affect what extensions like the DuckDuckGo one do.

lettergram 14y ago

>Google's results are starting to waver I'll be honest I don't know for sure, but I highly doubt Google would intentionally hurt themselves by ruining their search results. Also, >Google+ requirement is a cancer eating their products from the inside. I do agree it's B.S. but using 4 different computers on a regular basis and being a student I find it more useful to use their products than not. Especially, the syncing options so basically my drive/chrome holds everything between all my computers. This would be impossible without having some way to link them (via email say, well they use Google+ to try and make more money like every company NEEDS to do to survive). Therefore I say I am alright with their changes because Bing and DuckDuckGo have significantly reduced capacities (to the point of usability is fair at best)

criley 14y ago
Google+ is a blight. I have multiple Google Accounts (I don't need my real name attached to my main gmail account!) and it's utter horror trying to use Google products. You either give up on having an anonymous email because they WILL FORCE YOUR real name to be attached to your email, or you give up on Google integration features because you simply CANNOT use Google features without a real name anymore. Trying to switch between my "public Google account" for functionality and my "private Google account" for privacy is almost impossible when you consider how broadly Google integrates the features. It's simply unteneable, completely. Google wants my privacy gone, and is denying me access to their services until I agree to give it up entirely. Very, very frustrating for users who have more than one account.
- Houshalter 14y ago
  I tried to create multiple YouTube channels for uploading different types of videos since I didn't want them all bundled in one channel. That now requires making multiple Google accounts. It's not impossible but it's highly discouraged, and they require registering each one with a phone number.
- criley 14y ago
  Reply to myself: If you're an Android dev, sorry I've never rated your apps, left comments or gotten ahold of you! The Play Store REQUIRES a fully activated real-name Google+ Account to rate apps and leave feedback, so I've been wholly unable to communicate with the dozens and dozens of apps that request feedback. Sorry friends. Blame Google!

dornab 14y ago

Did you ever try the google vs bing comparison site? (http://www.bingiton.com/ http://www.bingiton.com/). I tried it and google won 5-0, it wasn't even close! But I agree that google is not what it used to be. They have a weird hunger for our data. But it's not just them, all web companies have become very aggressive in getting our data, it feels like we're being watched the whole time. It's exactly the opposite of what the internet was early on, it's almost like a change in the philosophy of the web. And not for the better. It seems like issues that famous people have, that they lose privacy at the price of fame, that whatever they do is public, forever. We all lost privacy and we didn't even get fame!

muraiki 14y ago
Wow, thanks for pointing that site out. I was actually hoping to see an improvement in Bing, but I picked Google 4 out of 5 times (doing more than just programming related searches, too)
myko 14y ago
I like to imagine someday Microsoft is going to come out and say the results which they said Google won Bing won and vice versa. This is the only thing that makes sense given Microsoft's marketing speak on that site (suggesting Bing wins in the majority of cases) as I've never known someone to actually have Bing come out on top.
- saurik 14y ago
  When I came up with my own search terms, Google won, 4 to 1. When I selected from the set they gave me (the list below the box to type in a manual query), Bing honestly won every single round. That's actually how they ran the experiment: they gave each person a set of search terms chosen from the Google Zeitgeist to select from. If you are curious to learn more about the experiment, Microsoft has a not-terribly-in-depth article covering the setup (there may be something more in-depth somewhere, but this is what Bing forwarded me to and it at least seems to directly answer your question). http://www.bing.com/blogs/site_blogs/b/search/archive/2013/02/06/bing-your-brain-test-then-test-again.aspx http://www.bing.com/blogs/site_blogs/b/search/archive/2013/0... Frankly, though, the reason that I believe Bing kept winning for me is that for these really popular core queries, the results were very similar: Bing simply selected more useful text snippets from news articles (letting me avoid clicking results) and weirdly even had better page titles, so it made what was overall the same results more pleasant to use. When I selected my own queries, though, the fact that Google continues to (and will forever) have a larger selection of the Internet available to its search engine became the deciding factor, as it would surface a few interesting things that Bing wouldn't catch. What I thereby obtain from Bing it On! is not that I want to switch from Google, but that Google has too much power at this point: they are probably forever going to get my search queries simply because they figured out how to index the web extensively and efficiently before "how to build scalable systems" became more general knowledge (although some of that is actually due to Google, so there's this part of me that is saying "shut up and be grateful"), but now that they have this lead there's no real way to kick them down, even if someone else has managed to use the data they have more effectively.