Away with Google (and Bing)

nivek

As Above So Below
Just loaded it on desktop and am using it now. Interesting. Have to get used to it but appears to be very granular and feature rich. Very customizable.

The shield symbol next to the address bar, click on it and you can adjust some security features to each site individually if desired...

...
 

wwkirk

Divine
Dogpile/Google/Firefox update!

Because I have Dogpile added, Google will not permit Firefox to play, or even, preview, any YouTube videos.
Or rather, Firefox, in league with Google, will not allow the videos to be played.

I can easily see why Google doesn't like Dogpile, but don't know why Firefox hates them. Do they have an independent beef, or is Google paying Firefox off?
 

nivek

As Above So Below
Dogpile/Google/Firefox update!

Because I have Dogpile added, Google will not permit Firefox to play, or even, preview, any YouTube videos.
Or rather, Firefox, in league with Google, will not allow the videos to be played.

I can easily see why Google doesn't like Dogpile, but don't know why Firefox hates them. Do they have an independent beef, or is Google paying Firefox off?

I didn't know this until today, Mozilla (who developed and owns Firefox) is partnered with Google, they have a deal...

Mozilla signs fresh Google search deal worth mega-millions

...
 

wwkirk

Divine
At this very moment, I'm using Vivaldi.
I think I've finally kicked the Firefox habit. We'll see.
That didn't last long. Certain sites are able to detect my ad blocker on Vivaldi, but not on Firefox. So, to have the best of both worlds I will continue to utilize both browsers. Google with Firefox, Dogpile with Vivaldi. But Vivaldi is my official default.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
That didn't last long. Certain sites are able to detect my ad blocker on Vivaldi, but not on Firefox. So, to have the best of both worlds I will continue to utilize both browsers. Google with Firefox, Dogpile with Vivaldi. But Vivaldi is my official default.

The shield symbol next to the address bar, click on it and you can adjust some security features to each site individually...

...
 

wwkirk

Divine
That didn't last long. Certain sites are able to detect my ad blocker on Vivaldi, but not on Firefox. So, to have the best of both worlds I will continue to utilize both browsers. Google with Firefox, Dogpile with Vivaldi. But Vivaldi is my official default.

Developing...Stay tuned...
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Vivaldi is my official default.

It's like a brake job. Didn't realize how bad it was until you got it fixed. I've been noodling around with Vivaldi and Brave and they seem to be working out nicely. I used Firefox and Chrome so long I just got stuck.

I may try Vivaldi on my phone.
 

wwkirk

Divine
It's like a brake job. Didn't realize how bad it was until you got it fixed. I've been noodling around with Vivaldi and Brave and they seem to be working out nicely. I used Firefox and Chrome so long I just got stuck.

I may try Vivaldi on my phone.
I had been dissatisfied with Firefox for a long time, but didn't want to exert myself to learn a new browser. However, their shocking heavy handedness vis a vis Dogpile tipped the scales against them.

Still learning Vivaldi, but I think I understand most of it.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Vivaldi’s interface is different and takes some adjustment. I like the tab preview - handy.

I take any browser and throttle it. Don’t let it remember passwords, link accounts, remember history or store payment methods. The browser has to ask for access to anything including where downloads go. I put The Klamp on it and tweak it from there. Just old habits I guess.
 
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.
It's almost spooky how this describes my own habits. I like Firefox because I have learned how to set it up the way I want it, but the constant updates and pointless changes are irritating. A while back, I finally got around to pruning and reshuffling my bookmarks so that the list didn't extend beyond the bottom of the screen. That stopped the annoying scrolling it would do, sometimes unbidden. So a few days later, along comes an update that changed the spacing (presumably to make it work better on a phone or something) and the scrolling is back. Dorks.

Dogpile was great back before Google was invented. I only recently learned it's still around. Been trying DuckDuckGo and like it. I'm sure my Google searches suffer from years of baggage, even though I have every anti-tracking thing I can find installed on Firefox. I like Brave. They all do some things well and others not so great. Lots of stuff, even other Google products, don't work right for me on Chrome, so I usually have three browsers running. Lots of RAM and a decent processor make that pretty painless.

W10 was getting pretty clogged up, so I switched to an SSD and a clean install. It's almost like a new computer! Got rid of that dumbass password thing every time the machine woke up, too. "Listen carefully, computer: You are not a tablet owned by a teenager. You are a desktop in a house. There are no banking passwords or even login links to anything important stored in there, so stop pretending to protect me."
 

nivek

As Above So Below
W10 was getting pretty clogged up, so I switched to an SSD and a clean install. It's almost like a new computer!

Are you going to try Windows 11?...Solid state drives have sold me, it's been many moons since bought a disc drive...

...
 

nivek

As Above So Below
Another decent browser is Pale Moon, it's open source for Linux and Windows, however there's no mobile version for Android nor for Apple...

The Pale Moon Project homepage

...
 
Are you going to try Windows 11?...Solid state drives have sold me, it's been many moons since bought a disc drive...

...
I think I'll wait for the next computer to try 11. I'm not sure if either my desktop or laptop is properly set up for 11. The laptop is the newest, and it's pretty respectable hardware so I might switch it after they pull the plug on 10.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I dug out an old W7 machine, cleaned out the dust, and "upgraded" it to 10, while I still could. It went very smoothly, and with a $9 dongle, that old tank now has Bluetooth. I'm using a MS wireless "natural" keyboard, and I love it. Been using the odd split design for many years now, but this wireless version has very crisp keys and a really nice feel. I can't type at all on a normal keyboard, but I can do pretty well on an ergo version. While I was learning to actually type many years ago (I actually taped over the keys so I'd learn to touch type) I developed some serious wrist pain. These wacky things cured it completely. They do take some getting used to though.

Hey thanks for the tip on the Vivaldi browser. I've downloaded it and poked around in there a bit. Looks like something I might really like. I'm going to check out the email client too. I miss my old Outlook Express. It did everything I needed, and it was my favorite lightweight word processor too. So of course they had to kill it. Replaced it with something else that's also gone now. Hmm. Dogpile is still around. I wonder if Eudora is still kicking...

Heh! Eudora lives. Possibly as Thunderbird, or something.
 
Last edited:

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
I'm going to check out the email client too

I've been using Vivaldi for a few days now and I call it a problem solver. I belong to a couple of other forums and the interfaces are problematic, to say the least. Much easier with this one. I want to use the email client but like getting stuck in a rut with browsers I look at my Thunderbird with years full of bloat. Got to noodle that one out before I do anything but can already see it has served it's purpose.
 
Top