

Ditching Google for a week - JacobAldridge
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/05/google_vs_bing_i_switched_to_microsoft_s_search_engine_for_a_week_here_s_what_happened_.html

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damian2000
This is the most important part of the article ...

 _For one thing, despite Bing’s better design, Google is unquestionably the
better search engine. Of the hundreds of searches I conducted in the last
week, there were a handful of times that Bing just didn’t seem to be giving me
the answer I was looking for._

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Maakuth
Indeed, it's peculiar how bad Bing is at times. With a Windows Phone in
family, I occasionally hit the dedicated Bing-button to quickly search for
something only to realize that I'd find the thing I was looking for much
faster if I just used browser, typed google.com and then searched. That always
reminds me how bad web search was before Google.

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chaostheory
I pretty much use duckduckgo as my main search site now. Though I still use
google for some queries each day, I don't feel as reliant on google as before.

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mironathetin
"The great thing about Chrome is that it remembers your preferences across all
your computers—I only needed to switch to Bing on my desktop, and there it was
on my laptop, too. (Thank you, Google!)"

Did the OP get it at all? That's one of the reasons to ditch Google.
Collecting data, no privacy, down to the tiniest details....

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StavrosK
Aren't sync items encrypted at the browser level? I thought they were...

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1880
They are, with your Google Account password by default, and if you want to be
extra cautious, with a different passphrase.

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fpgeek
I contemplated ditching Google search for a week (or two). So many people here
seem to think it is getting worse and I wanted to try and understand that
perspective.

Unfortunately, I quickly ran into a deal-breaker for me: no search plugin for
my default mobile browser (Firefox on Android). I found that strange given
that Firefox and Bing have been quite friendly at times, but there it is.

I did try the Bing search app on Android before giving up. I wasn't impressed
with the app (it tried too hard to be your browser/environment rather than
just a search utility) or with its search capabilities (it seemed to do a
pretty bad job of using my location information with my search, for example).

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batiudrami
Someone who sees Google Instant as a feature. Interesting, I can't disable it
quickly enough.

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ralfd
I find Instant useful. But sometimes I want to track back to the Google search
page with my exact used word search to try another search result, but, Alas!,
it is not in the browser history. Because I clicked an instant link.

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greyman
"If you’re never really going to escape Google—and if Bing is pretty much
exactly like Google—what’s the point?"

From my perspective, there still is a point doing so - enhance privacy by
feeding less personal data to Google. I still use Google search when
necessary, but I also use DDG, Bing and startpage.com.

I also use some of the Google services, like for example Reader, which is a
superior product far ahead of any competition, but I stopped using some of
their other services like Gmail, G+, Bookmarks, etc.

So while ditching Google completely is currently inpractical, reducing its
usage is still justifiable thing to do.

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shocks
I ditched Google for DDG a few months ago. Haven't looked back!

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mironathetin
Me too. Good bye Google!

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illumen
!g yeah, goodbye and hello google.

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fredley
My experience exactly. I switch completely over to DDG, and ended up switching
back after I realised I was starting so many queries with !g it made no sense
at all.

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mironathetin
You don't get the same "quality" of answers from DDG. That's by design. Since
Google tracks your searches, you always get what Google thinks you prefer, or
what Google knows makes most benefit for them. If you use DDG this is
different. Thats the whole point about it IMHO.

With DDG, if I am not sloppy and really try to find the best search string, I
usually get my answers on page one. Not as the first item though. This only
shows that the net is much more diverse than big G makes it look like.

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shocks
On the contrary, I consider "personalised" search results to be of lower
quality.

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mtts
* The great thing about Chrome is that it remembers your preferences across all your computers—I only needed to switch to Bing on my desktop, and there it was on my laptop, too. (Thank you, Google!)*

Which is done by storing your preferences on ... Google

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dalore
Try duckduckgo.com

It was created by one of our own here in hacker news.

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antithesis
One could also consider using a Google scraper like startpage.com.

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greyman
I don't know why you was downmoded; I also use startpage, along with DDG, Bing
and Google. Actually, it is technicaly not Google scraper, their results are
different than Google's. I use them when I don't want to reveal my search
string in the URL.

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maybird
It's worth noting that slate.com use to be owned by Microsoft.

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chris_wot
Spqr - very few people can read your comments. You've been hellbanned. In
fact, I don't think your posts have ever been seen!

