I don’t really care about privacy on my internet searches, but google isn’t what it once was.
It’s not uncommon that I have to go to the second or third page of results, or even refine my query and then go to the second or third page of results to find what I’m looking for.
If I set search filters to the last 24 hours, and search for an event, like the recent hurricane. Half the results that pop up lead to spam sites.
Google wasn’t like that before. Until last year, I don’t think I’d ever visited the second page of search results on google, unless I was searching for something really obscure or niche.
If DDG wasn’t terrible for non English searching, I’d use it exclusively. Not because of privacy, but because Google really sucks these days.
For E-mail I switched to Runbox.com, this was partly because of privacy, but it was primarily because the new gmail client kind of sucks in safari/Firefox, and despite invading my privacy, those 2-3 advertisement-pretend-to-be-real-mail-annoyances they put on top of your inbox, never actually advertise anything I’m even remotely interested in, unless I’ve already bought it.
It’s been much longer, but my first smartphone was an android. When it got ridiculously slow after two years, even when rooted and fresh installed, I got angry and bought an iPhone. I’ll never own an android device again, this is also partly because of privacy (I’d want the play store) but it’s mainly because of useability.
I’m happy people are taking privacy more serious, I should too, but my main reason for not chosing google products, is that they’ve become inferior. I mean, I think google maps is the real test on whether or not you care about privacy. OSM and Apple maps aren’t terrible, but I think most people still use google maps even though it’s arguably one of the most privacy intrusive things you’ll ever use.
It’s not uncommon that I have to go to the second or third page of results, or even refine my query and then go to the second or third page of results to find what I’m looking for.
If I set search filters to the last 24 hours, and search for an event, like the recent hurricane. Half the results that pop up lead to spam sites.
Google wasn’t like that before. Until last year, I don’t think I’d ever visited the second page of search results on google, unless I was searching for something really obscure or niche.
If DDG wasn’t terrible for non English searching, I’d use it exclusively. Not because of privacy, but because Google really sucks these days.
For E-mail I switched to Runbox.com, this was partly because of privacy, but it was primarily because the new gmail client kind of sucks in safari/Firefox, and despite invading my privacy, those 2-3 advertisement-pretend-to-be-real-mail-annoyances they put on top of your inbox, never actually advertise anything I’m even remotely interested in, unless I’ve already bought it.
It’s been much longer, but my first smartphone was an android. When it got ridiculously slow after two years, even when rooted and fresh installed, I got angry and bought an iPhone. I’ll never own an android device again, this is also partly because of privacy (I’d want the play store) but it’s mainly because of useability.
I’m happy people are taking privacy more serious, I should too, but my main reason for not chosing google products, is that they’ve become inferior. I mean, I think google maps is the real test on whether or not you care about privacy. OSM and Apple maps aren’t terrible, but I think most people still use google maps even though it’s arguably one of the most privacy intrusive things you’ll ever use.