They’re all based on others indexes to be honest so there isn’t really one.
DuckDuckGo is Bing, Startpage is Google, Kagi is seemingly a mishmash of a bunch of search engines (including the Russian owned Yandex) Brave is independent but owned and run by assholes so that isn’t much better.
Personally I like Kagi enough and it’s independent enough for me to pay for it.
Such as?
Still uses Google as an index so you’re just giving them money indirectly.
Hah! It’s funny because it’s true!
😢
Because the “you wouldn’t steal a car” nonsense scares a lot of people off
Because some people want to support the creators of content but digital downloads from iTunes or whatever are more expensive than getting a month of a streaming service
Because there is a level of convenience of having thousands of hours of content at your fingertips without having to store content locally or finding it on a “dodgy” website. Setting up torrents / usenet is more work than giving someone your credit card number
Because a lot of people don’t know where to find content and if they did they don’t know the difference between a 480p avi vs a 2160p HDR DV MKV and get confused with torrents and file formats and how to get them on their TV.
Because - at the moment - the ads aren’t that bad, I got one ad at the start and one episode in the middle of an episode of Gen V - obviously they’ll add more until it’s as bad as cable but they’re not there yet.
Pfttt… at least with DDG you can turn any of that stuff off with a button in a UI rather than having to make a new bookmark or fuck around with your browsers search engine.
You can even turn the ads off if you want.
Also, Apple Maps is totally fine, it’s not overloaded with ads like Google Maps is and it basically always finds the place I search for.
I think there is a big difference between the passive warming / cooling of clothing vs the huge energy requirement, spent resources and emissions required to basically run your entire home / office / factory / hotel as a giant fridge.
Humans probably shouldn’t be living in these conditions if they can’t survive without AC, no?
Hooray!
The soundtracks are absolutely incredible for a kids show.
I feel the original Chromecast was probably the last truly great original Google product, it was simple, it was inexpensive and it worked - you just plugged it in, joined your network and you were off, there really wasn’t anything like it at the time.
I really hate what they’ve become.
Tom seems like one of the most genuine people on the internet, he fact checks the crap out of everything (going out of his way to issue corrections when he is wrong - which just never happens) and produced exceptionally high quality and interesting content every damn week.
I’m slightly sad he’s giving up now only because I only discovered his channel a year or so ago and I’m not going to have new things to show my kids as they grow into an age of watching more educational content.
I can only wish him the best of luck with whatever comes next.
(Also, he deserves an MBE or something…)
Quick PSA: they don’t currently block VPNs, so you can sign up for an account in a cheap country (I picked Nigeria) and use a foreign currency debit card (I use Revolut) to get Premium for like £1.50 a month for my entire family.
If they close that loophole then I think I’ll be done with it, the ads make it basically unusable these days.
Hard disagree with that, DDG searches are accurate about 90% of the time that I use it (which as a web dev is quite a lot) if they aren’t hitting Google with the same term rarely wields any better results.
Apple Maps and Fastmail.
Fastmail is paid but the 1Password and disposable email address system makes it worth it for me.
I went through a period of de-googling a couple of years ago. Swapping browser, mobile os, search engine, storage, maps, music, video purchases, voice assistant and even email service was relatively simple, there are alternatives out there which do the job just as well if not better than what Google offer.
The only exception is YouTube, yea there are individual sites that occasionally offer some of the videos I want (often with a subscription attached), there are some federated systems like NewPipe which have some videos but there is no one offering remotely the quantity or quality of what you can get on YouTube for free.
As the article states, it’s basically a monopoly at this point without a viable alternative.
Arc is weird but pretty good once you get used to it.
DuckDuckGo is good if you want a minimal browser and don’t really care about extensions
Brave is OK if you want a slightly more private version of Chrome
Honestly though, just use Firefox.
The problem was that people weren’t really interested in any of it.
The UI was cluttered and messy to look at, none of it was as polished or natural to use as iOS or Android.
Plus there was no Google Maps, no Google Docs (and Office 365 wasn’t around to replace it), even that apps that were in the store felt pretty bad quality. I had Spotify on my iPhone and it was nearly flawless, when I switched to Windows Phone it kept cutting out or crashing or disconnecting from the mobile connection, it just wasn’t fully baked.
I’ve seen a few video games and movies that I’ve gone on to look into from YouTube ads.
90% of them are total annoying bollocks though.
It is!
I picked it up at launch and it’s improved quite a lot over the last few years, better combat and skill trees, fewer bugs, better cops, the world is beautiful and the quest design and performance animation makes Starfield feel pretty antiquated.
It’s still not perfect but I’m on my second play through and I’m still having a good time, I’m very excited to see the new stuff in Phantom Liberty too.
I will be using wanktank going forward, maybe adjusting it to “yankwanktank” for the especially egregious American monstrosities.