Solved Friday poll: Which is your preferred search engine?
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Time for a new poll!
This week we're curious about your go to search engines and reasons for using them. If yours is not listed as an option, do let us know in the comments below.
Jump over to Vivaldi.net to cast your vote!
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And the results are in!
DuckDuckGo gets the gold medal this week with 34% of the votes, followed by Google (27%), others (13%), StartPage (12%), Ecosia (10%) and Bing (4%).
Other options mentioned: Qwant, Swisscows, Brave Search, Andisearch, Kagi.
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@jane-n, by defalt I use Andisearch, apart Startpage to search images (Andi in this ambit is still in developement and not so good (only two devs)).
Regarding privacy and philosophy very similar to that of Vivaldi, for me Andi is the perfect companion, despite using AI. -
bing
google(Private Search) -
Bing. Because it supports Vivaldi, and its image search is better than Google's.
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I use the Ecosia search for several reasons.
Because Vivaldi has a deal with Ecosia,
Eosia gets its search results from Google Search and Microsoft Bing Search and because Ecosia uses 80 percent of its profits to plant trees worldwide for a better environment.
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Startpage in private. I've been using DuckDuckGo for main window but am experimenting with Freespoke, and Bing.
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Startpage
Linu74
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Google and DuckDuckGo, but can ony select one so Google
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Brave Search. Cannot emphasize how my 24/7 search engine is Brave Search and how I've found it irreplaceable.
Great stuff about Brave Search: Independent search index
. Code LLM
. Privacy-respecting
. Stuff is as searchable as anywhere else.
. I don't add to the already crazy Google or Microsoft dependency I'm in. -
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I hate that my have to use primarily Google, but for my work, no other search engine can match the results. As it is mission critical, I'll switch when something with more comprehensive, more accurately focused results comes along.
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What do you hate if it gives you the best results?
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@barbudo2005 It's Google, and it's spying on me. I'd love to not be using Google products.
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I mostly use G. But sometimes I use Qwant which is quite reliable as results
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@Ayespy
Said:"It's Google, and it's spying on me."
According to Wiktionary:
"Spy
A person who secretly watches and examines the actions of other individuals or organizations and gathers information on them (usually to gain an advantage)."
Could you explain what advantage or benefit Google gets from gathering information from your searches that affects you directly and in a practical way?
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@barbudo2005 said in Friday poll: Which is your preferred search engine?:
Could you explain what advantage or benefit Google gets from gathering information from your searches that affects you directly and in a practical way?
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@barbudo2005 To a degree, it denies me an objective view of the information universe. It does this by monitoring my online behavior, breaking this down in to geographic information and data concerning my apparent likes and dislikes, interests, etc. and selling this information to its affiliates. So then, not only is my online information universe within Google apps and services molded to be stickier to my eyeballs, but affiliate companies also modify the contents they show me with the aim of being more attractive to me and hopefully selling me something. So If I look up something concerning trucks, soon everywhere I look online, I am shown trucks, trucks and more trucks. Truck dealerships, truck ratings, loans for trucks, insurance for trucks, truck equipment, truck cartoons, truck videos, and on and on. There is a lot more to see and to know about than trucks, but all I get to see is trucks (slight exaggeration).
Now for my mission-critical searches, this actually can be a slight benefit. Google will figure out I am researching truck safety and slant my search results in that direction, so that my results contain a deeper and wider view of truck safety items, whereas Startpage will never do this - and will give me just as many irrelevant results as relevant results - even though it is getting its results from Google. I can adjust my syntax to account for this, but only to a degree.
But being human, I am not immune to manipulation (more resistant than most, but not immune) and content designed to engage me can lead me to less-than-optimum choices and decisions. And not just me - but other humans I have to deal with in the world, and whose choices and decision-making I can objectively watch being guided and reinforced into non-optimum patterns by the manipulation of their information universes. To whatever degree I enrich Google (or Meta) by using its services, I actually make it more possible for them to have the resource to do this. As this is bad for humanity, it is bad for me.
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@Ayespy, @barbudo2005, it is not only the privacy problem that exists that Google sells my data to third parties, with which I lose any control over this data, without knowing how these companies treat or protect it.
There is also another reason why I avoid search engines that log my activity, such as Google, Bing and others, it is the filter bubble they put you in, that is, they put results that correspond to your previous searches in the first place, which can put you in isolation of knowledge and information, especially if they are manipulated by economic or political interests.
For example, a flat earther will always have results in the first place in articles and pages that confirm his delusion, like asking someone who always agrees with you even if you are wrong. It's something that invalid a search engine as such, to show BS which agreed the users opinion, instead of objective, neutral and trustworth information.
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Duck Duck Go. Fine for me.
