Away with Google (and Bing)

wwkirk

Divine
I have officially abandoned Google in favor of DuckDuckGo. I'm also rejecting Bing.
There's something wrong with both Google and Bing. It has become increasingly difficult with both of them, especially Google, to obtain useful results. Somehow or other they have tweaked their search algorithms in such a way, that the most useful and natural results don't come up right away, if at all.

Many times in searching with Google, I would try in vain to reach basic search targets. This is definitely true for politically tinged searches. But it's also true for seemingly neutral searches. For example, I Googled "Healthfirst Medicare Advantage" and literally got no useful results. Either it gave me a dead link or a variety of other companies. Bing was hardly any better. But with DuckDuckGo I got many spot on results.

It appears that Google, and I'm afraid Bing as well, have become corrupt. They seem to be operating on behalf of special interests, both political and financial.

Trump is right: More than Facebook & Twitter, Google threatens democracy, online freedom

Here's The Evidence That Google's Search Results Are Horribly Biased

Of Course Google Is Biased | Tech Buzz | TechNewsWorld
(This link discusses financial bias.)
 

Shadowprophet

Truthiness
Well, I'm not sure how other people do it, I use Dogpile Dogpile.com There may be better multi-search engines out there. But, Truth be told unless you are searching fifteen different engines at once, you are slowing your study and research time drastically and limiting your reach. My suggestion, use Dogpile, or another multi-search engine. That uses Google, Bing, Duckduckgo, Torch, YAhoo, And several others. To be frank, Using only one search engine limits a person in so many ways, Not only will it take longer to find what you are looking for but you subject yourself to one corporation's censorship policies. By far the most honest uncensored search engine that exists is Torch, Btw https://xmh57jrzrnw6insl.onion.to/ But you need a special Proxy browser to access it, Called Tor browser, The Tor Project | Privacy & Freedom Online There used to be a time to be afraid of the Deep web, However, Times are different now, The Deep web is the peoples Non government regulated internet, the internet you remember from twenty years ago. Id' recommend it to anyone. Cause if you are using only Google, it's been a long time since you have seen the real internet brother.
 
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wwkirk

Divine
I must confess that I've gone back to Google. But regularly utilize other search engines as supplemental.
I'll give Dogpile a try.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
I must confess that I've gone back to Google. But regularly utilize other search engines as supplemental.
I'll give Dogpile a try.

I havent used Google search in quite a while now, always use DuckDuckGo as the main search engine to use...I'm looking at buying a Google free cellular phone for my next phone...

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nivek

As Above So Below
We may be the last generation to have grown up in a free America...

Unfortunately and very possibly true judging by the way things are going in our country...

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I like your Dogpile suggestion. If I am not mistaken, this search engine came out many years ago, and then was supplanted by the CIA run Google and others. Good to see it is still available - I've change to it. Thanks.
Yes, I'm back.
 

wwkirk

Divine
I like your Dogpile suggestion. If I am not mistaken, this search engine came out many years ago, and then was supplanted by the CIA run Google and others. Good to see it is still available - I've change to it. Thanks.
Yes, I'm back.
I just made Dogpile default. It required a third party plugin as Firefox will not supply it.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
I like your Dogpile suggestion. If I am not mistaken, this search engine came out many years ago, and then was supplanted by the CIA run Google and others. Good to see it is still available - I've change to it. Thanks.
Yes, I'm back.

haven't seen you in a while, welcome back !
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Never thought much about it, I use gmail accounts and haven't had any major issues with actually using Google or noted it was skewing my results in any way. I understand the point though. I just switched to DuckDuckGo for the hell of it, didn't need a plugin for Firefox. I'll fart around with that a while and see if I note any difference.

I have noted that Chrome lately has had a bug or two in that it doesn't want to delete it's history as it should, even with a third party utility. I tend to use it for general surfing, posting here etc. Firefox has been a go to for a long time and I tend to make that relatively restrictive and use it for financials, bill pay etc. Been farting around with Brave and may use that as an alternative - seems like Firefox has to have an update every single time I use it. More than one way to look at that, good and bad, but it can be annoying either way. Edge can also be made fairly restrictive and I do use it, but in a PC as an inherent browser I tend not to. Gives me one last one to go to if I ever run into trouble - which is a bit silly but once or twice that logic has been useful.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
I use gmail accounts

As do I but sparingly, and not for personal emails, just for generic correspondence mainly...

I pay for email service indirectly with the domain of my personal business, an annual fee to Godaddy I've been paying since 2005, I think it averages out to less than 2 dollars a month...I have full control over my email account with them and use that for personal email correspondence...I trust Godaddy much more than Google...

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nivek

As Above So Below
I like your Dogpile suggestion. If I am not mistaken, this search engine came out many years ago, and then was supplanted by the CIA run Google and others. Good to see it is still available - I've change to it. Thanks.
Yes, I'm back.

Welcome back!! Good to see you again Jim...

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pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Never occurred to me to switch search engines. Been causally cruising for jobs and Dogpile has already shown me stuff I hadn't seen with Google. Huh.
 

wwkirk

Divine
Never occurred to me to switch search engines. Been causally cruising for jobs and Dogpile has already shown me stuff I hadn't seen with Google. Huh.
I've also noticed more useful results at the top of the list most times.

(I don't always go the conspiratorial route, but the very fact that I had to jump through a couple of hoops to add Dogpile to Firefox inclines me to ask, "Why would they not want more people to use it?")
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
I've also noticed more useful results at the top of the list most times.

(I don't always go the conspiratorial route, but the very fact that I had to jump through a couple of hoops to add Dogpile to Firefox inclines me to ask, "Why would they not want more people to use it?")

My bad - it was DuckDuckGo I switched to in Firefox. It was already in the drop down list. I don't know enough about the differences between DuckDuckGo and Dogpile to go out of my way to make a choice. I know Dogpile's been around forever. It isn't inherent in Brave either.
 

wwkirk

Divine
My bad - it was DuckDuckGo I switched to in Firefox. It was already in the drop down list. I don't know enough about the differences between DuckDuckGo and Dogpile to go out of my way to make a choice. I know Dogpile's been around forever. It isn't inherent in Brave either.
Concise summary of their functional differences, extracted from Wikipedia:

Dogpile is a metasearch engine for information on the World Wide Web that fetches results from Google, Yahoo!, Yandex, Bing, and other popular search engines, including those from audio and video content providers such as Yahoo!.


DuckDuckGo is an internet search engine that emphasizes protecting searchers' privacy and avoiding the filter bubble of personalized search results. DuckDuckGo does not show search results from content farms. It uses various APIs of other websites to show quick results to queries and for traditional links it uses the help of its partners (mainly Bing) and its own crawler.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
My bad - it was DuckDuckGo I switched to in Firefox. It was already in the drop down list. I don't know enough about the differences between DuckDuckGo and Dogpile to go out of my way to make a choice. I know Dogpile's been around forever. It isn't inherent in Brave either.

I havent used Firefox in years, to me it's too bloated and slow....On my laptop and mobile devices I've been using Vivaldi browser...

Vivaldi Browser | Now with built-in Translate, Mail, and Calendar

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