Apple held talks with DuckDuckGo to replace Alphabet's Google as the default search engine for the private mode on Apple's Safari browser, the Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the discussions.
I’ve been trying to use DDG but honestly it sucks. I can’t imagine Apple switching to it, it would just make things worse for users, who commonly can’t figure out how to switch defaults. I think it’s just a negotiating point.
I found this too. After the reddit fiasco, I found DDG to have no downside. The search syntax is a little different (google’s is better) but the outputs arent radically different.
Yeah, have had a similar experience. I find the more specific or niche a question is, the better google is at finding relevant pages. DDG is perfectly fine the rest of the time, though, so I keep it as the default.
On Safari (iOS), Apple makes it easy to switch. Settings > Safari > Search Engine and select which one you want. I’ve been using DDG not quite a year and at first the change felt a lil jarring, but knowing I’m contributing less to Google’s ad revenue and their long list of privacy violations, I’m comfortable now sticking with DDG. Change isn’t always easy, convenient, or comfortable, but it can be done with just the tiniest bit of effort.
If the goodwill they garner from that makes APPL go up because it matches the privacy expectation they are branding themselves with, they might be making even more money anyway.
There is a big anti trust case against Google right now and this arrangement with apple is one of the topics of interest. If Google loses they could be forced to stop paying.
This is a copy/pasted message I wrote up on another thread. As long as there are people in the comments shilling kagi, I will shill my prefered engines. At least my suggestions will bring awareness to free as in freedom projects. I hope to god people paying 10$/month just to not get datacucked by search engines will also learn something and save their money.
SearX/SearXNG is a free and open source, highly customizable, and self-hostable meta search engine. SearX instances act as a middle man, they query other search engines for you, stripping all their spyware ad crap and never having your connection touch their servers. Of course you have to trust the SearX instance host with your query information, but again if you are that paranoid just self host.
I personally trust some foss loving sysadmin that host social services for free out of alturism, who also accepts hosting donations, whos server is located on the other side of the planet, with my query info over Google/Alphabet any day.
Its nice to be able to email and have a human conversation with your search engine provider thats just a knowlegable every day joe who genuinely believes in the project and freely dedicates their resources to it. Consider sending some cash their way to help with upkeep if you like the services they provide, they will probably appreciate and make use of that 10$ better than kagi.
Heres a list of all public searx instances, I personally prefer to use paulgo.io
All SearX instances are configured different to index different engines. If one doesn’t seem to give good results try a few others.
Did I mention it has bangs like duckduckgo? If you really need google like for maps and buisness info just use !!g in the query
search.marginalia.nu is a completely novel search engine written and hosted by one dude that aims to prioritize indexing lighter websites little to no javascript as these tend to be personal websites and homepages that have poor SEO and the big search engines won’t index well. If you remember the internet of the early 2000s and want a nostalgia trip this ones for you. Its also open source and self-hostable
Finally, YaCy is another completely novel search engine that uses peer-to-peer technology to power a big webcrawler which prioritizes indexes based off user queries and feedback. Everyone can download yacy and devote a bit of their computing power to both run their own local instance and help out a collective search engine. Companies can also download yacy and use it to index their private intranets.
They have a public instance available through a web portal. To be upfront, YaCy is not a great search engine for what most people usually want, which is quick and relevant information within the first few clicks. But, it is an interesting use of technology and what a true honest-to-god community-operated search engine looks like untainted by SEO scores or corporate money-making shenanigans.
I hope this has been informative to those who believe theres only a few options to pick from, I know these options are so unknown to most people.
I don’t know what the fuck is going on with Kagi on Lemmy. They must be using bots or paying people for promoting them. I just don’t get how people can trust them so much when they haven’t released the code for anything, they require you to be logged in which makes the user uniquely identifiable and therefore could easily correlate your searches to your identity (even if they claim not to, it’s just a “trust me, bro”)
Thank you! So I can use Google but stop it from doing the CAPCHA shit repeatedly because it detects my VPN? It’s abuse of the user and I’m tired of it.
I’m sure that’s what Google wants. You can either give them your data or you can go somewhere else, but hopefully you choose to give them your data because they make it too inconvenient not to.
When you need a scalable service for tons of users, federated isn’t going to cut it. This is why Apple wants DDG. Point the bajillion crApple lusers at one of your public instances (or even all of them chosen at random each time) and watch it crash and burn overnight. DDG has tons of servers and the infrastructure to hold up while a ton of people search why their luxury device is slowing down every time Apple releases a new one.
Lol Federation is the definition of scalable. Everyone serves their local users -> a miniscule amount of global traffic, everything but auth always stays local.
Universities have been doing it since the beginning of the internet. Email is the biggest example but there are others: eduGAIN and eduroam are the most notable ones coming out of the academic community.
Would also recommend whoogle. They have done public ones iirc but also hand a self hosted option (that I use behind a VPN) for those that line self hosted shit
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !technology@lemmy.world
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I’ve been trying to use DDG but honestly it sucks. I can’t imagine Apple switching to it, it would just make things worse for users, who commonly can’t figure out how to switch defaults. I think it’s just a negotiating point.
Google search has been fundamentally broken for at least two years. When the protests started on Reddit 90% of Google’s search results we’re broken.
I found this too. After the reddit fiasco, I found DDG to have no downside. The search syntax is a little different (google’s is better) but the outputs arent radically different.
Did DDG move away from consolidating results from Google and other engines?
I’ve been using it this way for years. I don’t use google products at all now and don’t miss it.
Duck duck go needs a lot of work to replace Google search.
I’ve used it for years but often I still get the shits and just bring Google up after duck duck go fails to find what I’m looking for.
Yeah, have had a similar experience. I find the more specific or niche a question is, the better google is at finding relevant pages. DDG is perfectly fine the rest of the time, though, so I keep it as the default.
The android app is nice, especially the app tracking blocker. It takes up the VPN connection tho
Huh I’m also a regular DDG user but I never have that experience.
I started using duck duck go a few months ago and have felt like my search results are a lot more useful since.
The maps function on it sucks though
DDG uses Apple Maps.
On Safari (iOS), Apple makes it easy to switch. Settings > Safari > Search Engine and select which one you want. I’ve been using DDG not quite a year and at first the change felt a lil jarring, but knowing I’m contributing less to Google’s ad revenue and their long list of privacy violations, I’m comfortable now sticking with DDG. Change isn’t always easy, convenient, or comfortable, but it can be done with just the tiniest bit of effort.
this is a very poor argument. every browser I’ve used, even Chrome, makes it easy to change the default search engine in the settings.
I tried to switch to DDG as my default search on iOS but my adblocker doesn’t block ads on it but it does on google, so I switched back
Duck duck go sucks for porn I stopped using it a while ago. Until they fix that I’m out.
The man has priorities
Or piracy
Bing image search is surpringly efficient for this
Isn’t it the same search index?
Doesn’t Google pay billions to Apple for the top spot? Why would they want to lose that stream of free cash?
If the goodwill they garner from that makes APPL go up because it matches the privacy expectation they are branding themselves with, they might be making even more money anyway.
Exactly. They are trying to win the privacy game, so a small sacrifice now could turn to be quite profitable.
There is a big anti trust case against Google right now and this arrangement with apple is one of the topics of interest. If Google loses they could be forced to stop paying.
Duck duck go is crap these days, probably since it uses Bing. All I ever get are “7 best ways to…” click bait, probably AI generated “articles”.
This is a copy/pasted message I wrote up on another thread. As long as there are people in the comments shilling kagi, I will shill my prefered engines. At least my suggestions will bring awareness to free as in freedom projects. I hope to god people paying 10$/month just to not get datacucked by search engines will also learn something and save their money.
SearX/SearXNG is a free and open source, highly customizable, and self-hostable meta search engine. SearX instances act as a middle man, they query other search engines for you, stripping all their spyware ad crap and never having your connection touch their servers. Of course you have to trust the SearX instance host with your query information, but again if you are that paranoid just self host.
I personally trust some foss loving sysadmin that host social services for free out of alturism, who also accepts hosting donations, whos server is located on the other side of the planet, with my query info over Google/Alphabet any day.
Its nice to be able to email and have a human conversation with your search engine provider thats just a knowlegable every day joe who genuinely believes in the project and freely dedicates their resources to it. Consider sending some cash their way to help with upkeep if you like the services they provide, they will probably appreciate and make use of that 10$ better than kagi.
Heres a list of all public searx instances, I personally prefer to use paulgo.io All SearX instances are configured different to index different engines. If one doesn’t seem to give good results try a few others.
Did I mention it has bangs like duckduckgo? If you really need google like for maps and buisness info just use !!g in the query
search.marginalia.nu is a completely novel search engine written and hosted by one dude that aims to prioritize indexing lighter websites little to no javascript as these tend to be personal websites and homepages that have poor SEO and the big search engines won’t index well. If you remember the internet of the early 2000s and want a nostalgia trip this ones for you. Its also open source and self-hostable
Finally, YaCy is another completely novel search engine that uses peer-to-peer technology to power a big webcrawler which prioritizes indexes based off user queries and feedback. Everyone can download yacy and devote a bit of their computing power to both run their own local instance and help out a collective search engine. Companies can also download yacy and use it to index their private intranets.
They have a public instance available through a web portal. To be upfront, YaCy is not a great search engine for what most people usually want, which is quick and relevant information within the first few clicks. But, it is an interesting use of technology and what a true honest-to-god community-operated search engine looks like untainted by SEO scores or corporate money-making shenanigans.
I hope this has been informative to those who believe theres only a few options to pick from, I know these options are so unknown to most people.
I don’t know what the fuck is going on with Kagi on Lemmy. They must be using bots or paying people for promoting them. I just don’t get how people can trust them so much when they haven’t released the code for anything, they require you to be logged in which makes the user uniquely identifiable and therefore could easily correlate your searches to your identity (even if they claim not to, it’s just a “trust me, bro”)
Yeah it’s ridiculous, seems like there’s a shill army of this proprietary service here.
Thank you! So I can use Google but stop it from doing the CAPCHA shit repeatedly because it detects my VPN? It’s abuse of the user and I’m tired of it.
I’m sure that’s what Google wants. You can either give them your data or you can go somewhere else, but hopefully you choose to give them your data because they make it too inconvenient not to.
Abuse of the user 🤣
Have you seen users privacy settings? They want their data to be harvested. Now come here and let me give you some sponsored content.
Yup! Enjoy :)
uuuuusing it
When you need a scalable service for tons of users, federated isn’t going to cut it. This is why Apple wants DDG. Point the bajillion crApple lusers at one of your public instances (or even all of them chosen at random each time) and watch it crash and burn overnight. DDG has tons of servers and the infrastructure to hold up while a ton of people search why their luxury device is slowing down every time Apple releases a new one.
Lol Federation is the definition of scalable. Everyone serves their local users -> a miniscule amount of global traffic, everything but auth always stays local.
Universities have been doing it since the beginning of the internet. Email is the biggest example but there are others: eduGAIN and eduroam are the most notable ones coming out of the academic community.
Would also recommend whoogle. They have done public ones iirc but also hand a self hosted option (that I use behind a VPN) for those that line self hosted shit
Saved. Thank you for your time and thoroughness!