Help me fight my ingnaorance about web browser alternatives to Google. Its analyrics and site loads are getting slower and slower.
I don’t care for the name Duck Duck Go and that one can just be skipped.
Wikipedia has a long list of search tools and I looked at that.
What if any alternatives do you use at The Straight Dope?
Bing is the only search engine that I know of which competes with Google in any major way, but it’s probably slower than Google and if they aren’t tracking you as much as Google does, it’s probably only because they haven’t been doing it for as long.
About the only reasonable web browser software alternative would be Firefox, but that’s hardly any better than Google’s Chrome, and probably worse (except that I’ve curiously found Chrome worse on my older Android phone).
Google Analytics can be disabled by disabling Javascript, if that is your problem.
I’m not entirely sure whether that’s your problem, as Google Analytics is probably not what you are talking about (it’s something that many sites that are not Google use to monitor their site).
That said, selectively disabling/blocking some Javascript has helped me with a few performance problems, so you could still try it.
I also use DuckDuckGo for about 80% of my searching, though.
I’m confused. Are you asking for browser or search engine alternatives? Or something else?
Thanks for answering.
I may try DDG just because it was recommended (in spite of its name.)
As to browsers versus search. Firefox has been pretty good.
I’ve kept Opera in my toolkit as well which will give less of the Java hoo-hah for
playing a you tube.
Does anyone know anything about the current development of Diaspora which was developed as an open source web server? Not sure what a web server is if not
simply a way to mount your own content.
My purpose is to get away from Google, so search engine change is the
specific question if it was not clear.
I put the duck back on my list.
If you want to get away from Google, apart from switching SEs, you’ll also have to stop using Chrome, Gmail, YouTube, Google maps, Google calendar, Google translate and any other service Google offers. And if your smartphone is Android, you’d better switch to Apple.
I used to use Dogpile.com on the odd occasion, and it seemed to work well. I have also read that Bing is better when it comes to searching for adult content, but have wondered why this would be?
If that’s really your goal, stop using the internet. They have their tentacles in most public-access websites.
Changing browsers and OSes and search engines will save you from about 10% of Google’s influence. The other 90% is at the other end with the content providers. The only way to avoid that 90% is not to use the internet.
If you really want to escape - there is always TOR.
https://startpage.com/– the world’s most private search engine. They search Google for you.
Combine with Ghostery to stop the trackers on websites you visit.
This page might be a good place to start to look for alternative search engines.
Even apple sees tons of google advertising embedded in about 4.8 billion web pages.
Perhaps a better question is, whats his issue with google?
There’s also the Google Analytics opt-out add-on:
https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout
Granted, you have to trust Google enough to not track you when you install their addon to tell them not to track you while you’re using their browser. Seems silly when the people who most want this are probably the same people who don’t trust Google…
You can download these addons for Firefox here. Fill in the search box on that page with their names. Each is explained on its download page, so you may decide not to use it.
Ghostery, Google search link fix, Google no-tracking URL, Remove Google Tracking, Remove Google Tracking for Copy, Remove Yahoo Tracking, Search Engine Security, Self-Destructing Cookies and Prefbar (it offers very easy and on-demand, fine-grained cookie control).
Firefox also has a “do not track” option (until the future Firefox Version 39 available only in about:config) that I have turned on. about:config is explained here.
Good! Duck duck go is really great, albeit with a dumb name, I’ll agree. It doesn’t track you and it gives good search results, but my favorite feature is the bang syntax. If you set your default search engine to DDG, you can search any website without going to it first. You can even search Google, and DDG will make sure it is anonymous. For example, if you want to search Wikipedia, just type “!w searchterm”. The exclamation point is the “bang” I was talking about. If you want to search amazon, it’s !a, if you want to search google, it’s !g (or !gi for google images or !gm for google maps, etc). It’s very handy.
Duck Duck Go is my search engine of choice. Just ignore the name, because it works just fine and that’s what matters.
As for browser, I think it’s less about the browser and more about the plug-ins and settings. Things like Ad Block, Flash Block, and Do Not Track Me all help keep your surfing a little more private. There are other utilities that specifically target Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube, etc. (Which I know are not all Google, but also tend to track usage).
So my browsing is in FireFox with all those extensions enabled. This blocks a lot of content, so I rely on Chrome to view specific pages or to do work on my accounting and tax-related sites (like QuickBooks Online). That way, my daily browsing is pretty secure.
Someone asked what the OP is worried about. I can’t answer for him, but my concern is the idea that one piece of information might be relatively anonymous, but if information is gathered and compiled, you might put it all together. For example, think of a mailing address. If one site collects the street number and one site wants the city and another wants the street name… well, someone looking at information from all three sites can probably have USPS autocomplete the address so that they have state and ZIP as well. What seemed like three innocuous pieces of anonymous information have been put together into something I really didn’t mean to give away.
And I do realize that what I’m doing is probably ineffective. If they want to know, they probably know no matter what I try to block. Still, I’m going to take a few simple steps to make it harder.
If you like doing lots of image searches, keep in mind many now edit (censor) your searches to eliminate porn. Google had already done that, and then Duck Duck Go followed suit (and I originally switched to them precisely because they didn’t do that shit. &%%#@%@.)